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^ g PROPBKTY OF THE

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« 8"7

A K T E S SCIENTIA VERITAS

LIBRARY OF
ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

EDITED BY

RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.

Number Five.

■^ .

>f>

I

OF

£conomitg anti ^olitite.

Vol. I. The Independent Treasury System of the
United States $1.50

By DAVID KINLEY, Ph.D., of th« 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. Socialtsnn and Social Reform

$1.50

By RICHARD T. ELY. Ph.D.. LL.D.. Professor of
Political Economy, and Director of the School of
Economics. 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-
nomics 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

HULL-HOUSE

MAPS AND PAPERS

5" ^ i^ 4 o

A PRESENTATION OF NATIONALITIES AND
WAGES IN A CONGESTED DISTRICT OF CHICAGO,

TOGRTHBR

WITH COMMENTS AND ESSAYS ON PROBLEMS

GROWING OUT OF THE SOCIAL

CONDITIONS

BY

RESIDENTS OF HULL-HOUSE

A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT
At 335 South Halsteo Strebt, Chicago, III.

Nbw York : 46 East Fourtbsnth Strebt

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

Boston: 100 Purchase Street

Copy BIGHT, 1806,
Bt Thomas Y. Crowkll'& Cohpaxt.

TTPOGAArHT BT C J. PiTKXB ft SOK,
BOBTOM.

. J

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

•^
1

Prefatory Note v

By Jane Addamb.

I. Map Notes and Comments 8

By AoNES Sinclair Holbrook.

II. The Sweating-System ' , 27

By Florence Kelley.

♦

III. Wage-Earnino Children— r 49

By Florence Kelley and Alzina P. Stevens.

IV. Receipts and Expenditures of Cloakmakers

in Chicago 79

By Isabel Eaton.

Y. The Chicago Ghetto 91

By Charles Zectblin. /

VI. The Bohemian People in Chicago 115

By JOSEFA HUMPAL ZeMAN.

VII. Remarks upon the Italian Colony in Chicago 131
By Alessandro Mastro-Valerio.

VIII. The Cook County Charities 143

By Julia C. Lathrop. -

IX. Art and Labor 105

By Ellen Gates Starr.

X. The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor

Movement 183

By Jane Addams.

Appendix. Hull-House: A Social Settlement . , 207

PREFATORY NOTE.

The word "settlement" is fast becoming familiar
to the American public, although the first settlement,
Toynbee Hall, in East London, was established so late
/ as 1885. Canon Barnett, the founder, urged as the
primal ideal that a group of University men should
reside in the poorer quarter of London for the sake of
influencing the people there toward better local govern-
ment and a wider social and intellectual life.

Since 1889 more than twenty settlements have been
established in America. Some of these are associated
with various institutional features, but the original idea
of a group of " residents " must always remain the essen-
tial factor.

The residents of Hull-House offer these maps and
papers to the public, not as exhaustive treatises, but
as recorded observations which may possibly be of
value, because they are immediate, and the result of
long acquaintance. *A11 the writers have been in actual
residence in Hull-House, some of them for five years ;
their energies, however, have been chiefly directed, not

vii

Vill PREFATORY NOTE.

towards sociological inyestigation^ but to constructive
work.

The colors in Charles Booth's wage maps of London

have been retained ; and, as in his appended essays, each
writer is responsible for the statements appearing over
his own signature.

After this explanation it is needless to add that the
following papers do not deal with settlement methods
or results, but simply record certain phases of neigh-
borhood life with which the writers have become most
familiar.

The appendix to the volume is a mere cursory review
of the present activities of Hull-House.

JANE ADDAMS.
335 So. Halsted Street, Chicago.

I.

MAP NOTES AND COMMENTS.

. _ * •

J.

MAP NOTES AND COMMENTS.

BT AGNES SINCLAIR HOLBROOK.

i
I

I.

obnbbaij comments.

The present work is the result of an attempt on the
part of some of the residents of Hull-House to put into
graphic form a few facts concerning the section of
Chicago immediately east .of the House.

The boundaries of the district are Halsted Street on
the west and State on the east, Polk on the north and
Twelfth Street on the south ; and the inhabitants, as the \

maps show, are chiefly foreigners. From Halsted to
State is one mile, from Polk to Twelfth, one third of a
mile. '-This third of a square mile includes east of the
river a criminal district which ranks as one of the most
openly and flagrantly vicious in the civilized world, and *

west of the same stream the poorest, and probably the
most crowded section of Chicago. At the extreme
northwest of the whole, on Halsted, near Polk, is situ- '

ated Hull-House, within easy walking distance of the
densely populated network of streets and alleys on the
west side, claiming our chief attention.

A string of small shops, the best sides of two or three
factories, and a few rather pretentious brick store fronts

3

«

/
' \

i

I

9

91 ** •>

HULL-IIOUiiE MAPS AND PAPERS,

form an outer fringe on Halsted and Twelfth Streets,
and give one the impression of a well-to-do neighbor-
hood. The main thoroughfares running jxvrallel with
Halsted and the river between Polk and Twelfth are
semi-business streets, and contain a rather cheap collec-
tion of tobacco-stands, saloons, old-iron establishments,
and sordid looking fancy-shops, as well as several fac-
tories, and occasional small dwelling-houses tucked in
like babies under the arms of industry. The cross
streets running parallel with Polk between Halsted and
the river are filled with dwelling-houses, built for one
family, but generally tenanted by several, and occasion-
ally serving as bakery, saloon, or restaurant as well as
residence. The back doors of large establishments give
glimpses of the inwardness of factory life, and bent
figures stitching at the basement windows proclaim that
the sweater is abroad in the land. Furnished rooms for
rent are numerous ; Italian rag and wine shops abound ;
dressmakers', calciminers', and cobblers' signs in Bohe-
mian, German, and Russian are not infrequent; while
the omnipresent midwife is announced in polyglot on
every hand.

Enumeration shows eighty-one saloons west of the
river, besides a number of "delicatessen," "restaura-

y tionen," and cigar-stands where some liquor is sold.

/ The proportion of wooden buildings to brick is approxi-

mately two to one throughout this part of the section ;

•~ but on the south side of Polk Street it is about four to

one, and on Ewing more than five to one. These figures
include only houses fronting on the street, and in the
case of large brick blocks assume that each portion cov-
ering a city lot is a building. Structures of mixed brick

I

SCHEDULES

Used in thk District betwekn Halsted Stkeet and the
Chicago River, Polk and Twelfth Streets, Chicago.
United States Department of Labor Investigations,
April to August, 1893.

These Schedules formed the Basis from which the Charts
WERE Colored. See Chapter *^ Notes and Comments/'

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of visitation.

3. Number of
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GENERAL COMMENTS, 5

and wood are counted in with the brick buildings, and
a few stone fronts form an exclusive, if inconsiderable,
class, by themselves. The only one of interest is No.
137 DeKoven Street, the site of the outbreak of the
great Chicago fire.

It is a striking fact that -where the better houses
prevail, as on DeKoven, Bunker, Taylor, and Forquer
Streets, the street is almost solidly built up ; while on
Clinton, Jefferson, and Des Plaines the more 'scattered
houses are veritable shells. One feels very clear, how-
ever, after long acquaintance with the neighborhood,
and after visits to many of the homes, that the poorest
of the tiny wooden houses, damp and unwholesome as
they may be, offer nothing to compare with the hideous-
ness shut up in the inside rooms of the larger, higher,
and to the casual eye the better tenements of more pre-
tentious aspect. The smart frontage is a mere screen,
not only for the individual houses, but for the street as
. a whole, /llear tenements and alleys form the core of
the district, and it is there that the densest crowds of
the most wretched and destitute congregate. Little
idea can be given of the filthy and rotten tenements,
the dingy courts and tumble-down sheds, the foul stables
and dilapidated outhouses, the broken sewer-pipes, the
piles of garbage fairly alive with diseased odors, and of
the numbers of children filling every nook, working and
playing in every room, eating and sleeping in every
window-sill, pouring in and out of every door, and
seeming literally to pave every scrap of "yard." In
one block the writer numbered over seventy-five children
in the open street ; but the effort proved futile when she
tried to keep the count of little people surging in and

V

6 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

out of passage-ways^ and up and down outside staircases,
like a veritable stream of life. •

One can but regard the unpaved and uncared for

alleys as an especially threatening feature in all this

unpleasing picture; and yet between Polk and Ewing

t Streets, and also between Ewing and Forquer, where

there are no alleys, the condition of the rear tenements
is the most serious.

It is customary for the lower floor of the rear houses
to be used as a stable and outhouse, while the upper
rooms serve entire families as a place for eating, sleeping,
being bom, and dying. Where there are alleys the
refuse and manure are sometimes removed ; where
there are none, it would seem they accumulate undis-
turbed. In front of each house stand garbage-receivers,
— wooden boxes repulsive to every sense, even when as
clean as their office will permit, shocking to both mind
and instinct when rotten, overfilled, and broken, as they
often are. Fruit-stands help to fill up the sordid
streets, and ice-cream carts drive a thriving trade. One
hears little English spoken, and the faces and manners
met with are very foreign. People are noticeably under-
sized and unhealthy, as well to the average observer as
to the trained eye of the physician. Especially do the
many workers in the tailoring-trades look dwarfed and
ill-fed; they walk with a peculiar stooping gait, and
their narrow chests and cramped hands are unmistak-
able evidence of their calling. Tuberculosis prevails,
especially in diseases of the lungs and intestine, and
deformity is not unusual. The mortality among children
is great, and the many babies look starved and wan.
,^ A Special Investigation of the Slums of Cheat Cities

"^

GENERAL COMMENTS. 7

, was undertaken, the spring of 1893, by the United States
, Department of Labor, by order of Congress ; and as Mrs.
I Florence Kelley, the Special Agent Expert in charge in
, Chicago, resided at Hull-House while conducting the
* inyestigation, the information collected by the govern-
ment officials was brought within the very doors.

The entire time of four government schedule men
from the 6th of April till the 15th of July, 1893, was
devoted to examining each house, tenement, and room in
j the district, and filling out tenement and family sched-

ules, copies of which are printed at the end of this
chapter. These schedules were returned daily to Mrs.
Kelley ; and before they were forwarded to the Commis-
sioner of Labor at Washington, a copy was made by one
of the Hull-House residents, of the nationality of each
individual, his wages when employed, and the number of
weeks he was idle during the year beginning April 1,
1892.

In recording the nationality of each person, his age,
and in the case of children under ten years of age the
nationality of his parents and his attendance at school,
were taken into account. All under ten years of age
I who were not pupils in the public school, and who were

not of American extraction, were classified with their
parents as foreigners.

In estimating the average weekly wage for the year,
first the number of unemployed weeks in each individual
case was subtracted from the number of weeks in the
year, the difference multiplied by the weekly wage when
' employed, and the result divided by fifty-two ; then the

amounts received by the various members of each fam-
ily, thus determined, were added together, giving the

.♦

8 BULL-BOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

average weekly income of the family throughout the
year.

These records were immediately transferred in color
to outline maps^ made from the Greely and Carlsen sur-
vey, and generously prepared for the present purpose by
Mr. Greely. These charts, with the street names and
house numbers, enable the reader to find any address,
the lots being colored to indicate, in one case the birth-
place of each individual, in the other the wage of each
family. Keys attached to the outlines explain the sym-
bols, some of the same colors being used in the two
cases with different meanings.

The mode of filling out the diagrams is slightly com-
plex, owing to the fact that an effort is made to give the
location of each family and individual, as nearly as may
be. In the main, the basis of representation is geo-
graphical, each lot being entirely colored over, whether
occupied by one person or one hundred. When people
of different nationality or wage income, however, live in
the same house, or in houses on the same lot, the space
given to each on the charts is proportionate, not to the
size of their houses or rooms, but (in the birthplace map)
to the number of individuals, and (in the ws^e map) to
the number of families. Thus the geographical relations
are preserved, except within the lot, where each individ-
ual in the one case, and each representative of a family
in the other, receives equal recognition, whether he
shares with half a dozen others a room in the rear of the
third story, or occupies in solitary state the entire ground
fl,oor.

No clew to the density of population is therefore
given, except indirectly, in such a case as occurs on the

GENERAL COMMENTS. 9

comer of Polk and Clark Streets, where one might rear
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 which is in no way
indicated on the diagrams.

The United States Department of Labor states the
exact figures as part of the report on The Slum Invest i-
gatiouy 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 hou#e 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 which
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 changiag and
growing municipality than in a more immovable and
tradition-bound civilization. Many 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 ASD PAPERS.

any improvement on property would only be money
thrown 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 few 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. New brick tenement houses constantly
going up replace wooden ramshackle ones fallen into an
uninhabitable state. The long, low house on the north-
east comer of Taylor and Jefferson cannot last long. No.
305 Ewing is in a desperate condition, and No. 958 Polk
is disintegrating day by day and has been abandoned.
Other cases might be cited, and disappearai^es 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 renders 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 sui>-
pose that Chicago will take warning from the experience
of older cities whose crowded quarters have become a

V

GENERAL COMMENTS. 11

menace to the public health and security. The possi-
bility of helping toward an improvement in the sanita-
tion of the neighborhood, and toward an introduction of
some degree of comfort, has given purpose and confi-
dence to this undertaking. It is also hoped that the set-
ting forth of some of the conditions shown in the maps
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 ; andr although the eyes of the world do
not centre upon this third of a square mile in the heart
of Chicago as upon 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, the
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 many cases the reports
obtained from one person were corroborated by many

12 nuLL-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 neither 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 building, 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 j 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 COMMENT^. 13

quent house-movings of this sort alter the face of the
district more or less within a year, and some neighbor-
hoods put on a smarter look, while increased crowding
continues in all.

Families also move about constantly, going from tene-
ment to tenement, finding 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-payment of rent form a
floating population of some magnitude, and a kodak view
of such a shifting scene must necessarily be blurred and
imperfect here and there.

But 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 present
conditions rather than to advance theories — to bring
within reach of the public exact information concerning
this q\iarter of Chicago rather than to advise methods by
which it may be improved. While vitally interested in
every question connected with this part of the city, and
especially concerned to enlarge the life and vigor of the
immeiliate neighborhood, Hull-House oifers these facts
more with the hope 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 poor would come
with bad grace even from government officials, were the

14 HULL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

statistics obtained so inconsiderable as to afford no work-
ing basis for further improvement. The determination
to turn on the searchlight of inquiry must be steady and
persistent 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 personal impertinence
of many of the questions asked, would be unendurable
and unpardonable were it not for the conviction that
the public conscience when roused must demand bet-
ter surroundings for the most inert and long-suffering
citizens of the commonwealth. Merely to state symp-
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.

COMMENTS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES. 15

IL

COMMENTS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES.

In classifying the people from so many corners of
tire earth, an 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 clp^s (white)'^embraces English,
English-Canadians, Scotch, all Americans of native
parentage, and such children bom 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 be used, speaking a
foreign language, and, although bom 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. JSast 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 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

Wisconsin, Michigan, and other neighboring States, most
of whom 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 Koumanians 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 : —

ITAI.IAN (blue).

Swiss (blue stripe).

Fbench (brown).

French Canadian . (brown stripe).

Greek (olive).

SvRiAN (olive stripe).

Chinese (orange).

Arabian (orange stripe).

Turk (white crescent on red).

COMMENTS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES. 17

» Eigl^teen nationa^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-
i 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 occupy
the better streets toward the comer 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 Forquer Street, which is a shade better
than Ewing or Polk. A few French pepper the west^
em edge of the section, the poorer members of a large
and well-to-do French colony, of which 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 Plymouth Place and Clark Street.

The Italians, the Russian and Polish Jews, and the
Bohemians lead in numbers 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 flavor to the region, but are
comparatively inconsiderable in interest.

18 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

Americans of native parents 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 bom
in different coxmtries 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

^
t

X

COMMENTS ON MAP OF NATIONALITIES. 19

over to them ; for the arrival of either one is followed by
the prompt departure of all tenants of other nationality
who can manage to get quarters elsewhere, in much the
same way that the appearance 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 with which the Dago regards the
Sheeny 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 MAPS AND PAPERS,

III.
COMMENTS ON THE WAOB-MAP.

In turning from the nationality-map to the wage-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 say 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 seveml families fre-
quently use the same. The only constant factor in the
lives of the members of such a circle, l^eyond tlie 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 bO'ard, 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 ; while 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
No. 133 Ewing Street ; and similar instances of less
serious crowding are found.

I

COMMENTS 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 neighlx)rhood, 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 clothing, 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 weekly 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, employed
on the railroadd from twenty to thirty 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 difiicult 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 HULL-HOUSE MAP 8 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
fi^rst 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
very 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

COMMENTS ON THE WAGE-MAP. 28

in the same way. Usually the schedules cod tain no in-
formation 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 SWEATING-SYSTEM.

THE SWEATING-SYSTEM.

BY FLORENCE KELLEY,
State Intpecior of Factories and Workshopi for lUinoU.

The sweating-system 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 by no means uni-

27

28 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

formly, famished for running machines. The same
division of labor prevails as in the smaller shops ; and
the garment, after being cut, goes to 4he 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 ^ther 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 finished garments. Formerly the operator
was often an " all around worfier," 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^rls, 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 aflFected disastrchisly 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 flVid and destroy the
Vermin commowly y f esting garments returned from out-
side workers.

Children are not employed to any considerable extent
in the inside shops, and the employees are usually £ng-

1

THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 29

lish-speaking workers, though comparatively few native
Americans are^ left in the garment trades, even in the
inside shops. TJie organizations of employees are' fee-
ble, both numerically a4xd financially, except the cutters'
union ; and wages in the best inside shops are far below
the rates common in well-organized trades, and ire rap-
idly and steadily falling.

With two exceptions, evef y manuf v^turei; of garments i
in Chicago gives out clothing to be made in tenement
i houses. This is true of white underwear and custom-
\ made outer wear, quite as much as of the ready-made
clothing ordinarily associated in the public mind with
(the sweating-system. There are three common varia-
tions in the manner of giving out goods. Many manu-
facturers have closed their inside shops, and retain only
their cutting-rooms. These give garments directly to
large numbers of individual employees, who make them
^ up in their dwellings ; oij. to sweaters, or to both. Man- i
ufacturers who retain their inside shops commonly give
out garments in both these ways ; and many of them also
make a practice of requiring employees who work by 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 gi^^es out garments to

• be made up, and is required by law to show this list on
demand to the factory and workshop inspectors.

It is the duty pf the inspectors to follow up these

• lists, and examine the surroundings amidst which this*-
work is done; and they report that* the conditions in

' which garments are made that are given out from the
, ^^ inside shops for night work and Sunday work differ not

30 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

a jot from the tenement-house shops and the sweaters'
home finishers' dwellings. Thus, a recent night inspec-
tion of work given out from one of the largest cloak
manufactories in the West resulted as follows : The gar>
ment maker was found in his tenement dwelling in the
rear of a factory. With his family, a wife and four in-
describably filthy children, he occupies a kitchen and
two bedrooms. The farther bedroom could be entered only
by passing through the other rooms. This farther bed-
room, where the man was found at work, was 7x7X8
feet, and contained a bed. a machine, one chair, a reek-
ing lamp, and two men.^The bed seemed not to have
been made up in weeks ; and in the bed, in a heap, there
lay two overcoats, two hats, a mass of bed-covers, and
nine fine tan-color capes trimmed with ecru lace, a tenth
cape being on the machine in process of stitching. The
whole dwelling was found to be crawling with vermin,
and the capes were not free from it. "^

The manufacturers hold their outside workers respon-
sible for the return of the goods ; and sweaters have been
^ prosecuted for larceny, and have been followed even
beyond the borders of the State, and brought back for
prosecution under the criminal law for failing to return
goods intrusted to them. !3ut the manufacturers do
not hold themselves responsible for the dealings of the
outside workers with their victims. Thus, a sweater
extradited from another State, and prosecuted here for
larceny of unfinished garments, is subject merely to a
civil suit on the part of his employees for hundreds of
dollars of wages due them; while the manufacturer is
in no degree responsible for the payment of these wages
for work done upon garments belonging to him. Such

THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 31

cases have not been rare; and the manufacturers dis-v
claim all moral responsibility to the unfortunate victims,
as they disclaim all responsibility to the purchasing
public for disease carried in garments made in the
sweaters' victims' infectious homes.

THE SWEATERS.

The name of the sweaters is legion. More than a'
thousand of their shops have been inspected, and moreS
than eight hundred licensed by the city ; while it is an
open secret that these numbers fall far below the total
actually existing. It is well-nigh impossible to keep
perfect lists of sweaters ; since a man may be an operator
to-day, a sweater on a small scale next week^may move
his shop in the night to avoid the payment ^«Ai^^^li<|^^
may be found working as operator in an inside shop at ^
the close of the season.

The sweaters differ from the cutters in their relation
to the manufacturers, in that the sweaters have no organi-
zation, and are incapable of making any organized demand
for a standard of prices. They are separated by differ-
ences of religion, nationality, language, and location.
As individuals they haggle with the manufacturers, un-
dercutting each other, and calculating upon their power
to reduce the pay of their employees below any point
to which the manufacturers may reduce theirs ; and as
individuals they tyrannize over the victims who have the
misfortune to work in their shops. There has never
been, and there is not now, in Chicago any association of
sweaters of any kind whatsoever. There is, therefore,
no standard price for the making of any garment, either
for the sweater or his victim. With every change of

#

82 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

style, there is a change of price, and the tendency of the
change is always downward. The fashion and the change
of seasons are an ever-ready excuse for the manufactur-
ers, who constantly aim to concentrate the work of the
year into the shortest possible season. There are two
reasons for this : In a short season the turn-over of the

' capital invested is quick and comparatively sure ; and a
more sinister consideration is the fact that sweaters who
have long been without work, and whose coming sea-
son threatens to be very short, are ready to take work
upon any terms offered them. The consequence of the
concentration of the manufacture of garments into short,
recurrent seasons is an extreme pressure upon the con-
tractor for the speediest possible return of the garments

^gifV him ; and, hitherto, this pressure has forced the
sweaters' victims to work far into the night, and to dis-
regard Sunday and all holidays. It is the belief of the
sweaters' victims as well as of the inspectors, that a rigid
enforcement of the eight-hour law within these shops
will compel the sweaters to increase the number of em-
ployees, enlarge their shops, and so create groups numeri-
cally too strong to submit to conditions easily imposed
upon ten or a dozen very poor people.

By persistent prosecutions' of sweaters found employ-
ing children under the age of fourteen years, the practice

has been to some extent broken up. During the efPort to .

I

remove them from these shops, there were found boys
whose backs have been made crooked for life by contin-
uous work at heavy machines, and boys and girls unable
to speak English, and equally unable to read or write in
any language.

The sweaters are found in all parts of the city. They

THE SWEATING-SYSTEM. 83

are of nine nationalities, speak nine different languages,
and are of several religions. The employees ordinarily
follow the nationality and religion of the sweater ; though
Swedes are sometimes found employing Bohemian chil-
dren, and Eussian Jews are found with employees of
various nationalities. In general, however, the language
of the shop is the language of the sweater, and follows
the nationality of the colony in which it is located.

THE NINETEENTH WARD.

In the nineteenth ward the sweaters are Russian Jews
and Bohemians ; and their employees in the shops are of
the same nationality, while their home finishers are ex-
clusively Italians, — the wives and daughters of the street-
sweepers and railroad gang hands, who form so large a
part of the population of the ward. The garments made
here are principally coats, cloaks, trousers, knee-pants,
and shirts. There are one hundred and sixty-two shops,
employing men, women, and children.

The shops are, without exception, in tenement houses
or in the rear of tenement houses, in two-story buildings
facing alleys that are usually unpaved and always nox-
ious with the garbage and refuse of a tenement-house
district. If the sweater's shop is in a tenement hcflise,
it is sometimes — but very rarely — in the ground floor
front room, built for a store and lighted by large store
windows. But far more commonly it is a basement, or an
attic, or the flat over a saloon, or the shed over a stable.
All the tenement houses selected either for shops or
home finishers are of the worst and most crowded de-
scription. The staircases are narrow, and are used in
common by tenants and garment workers, so that in-

34 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

fectious diseases breaking out among the swarming chil-
dren can scarcely fail to be communicated to garments
anywhere under the same roof, because the utmost
laxity prevails in the matter of isolation. The unsani- J •

tary condition of many of these tenement houses, and ,
the ignorance and abject poverty of the tenants, insure
the maximum probability of disease; and diphtheria, /

scarlet-fever, smallpox, typhoid, scabies, and worse
forms of skin diseases, have been found in alarming
proximity to garments of excellent qua* ty in process of
manufacture for leading firms.

There is not in the whole ward a clothing-shop in any
building erected for the purpose; and in no case is
steam-power supplied, but the use of foot-power is uni-
versal. In but one ease known to me within this ward
has a sweater acquired means sufficient to own the
premises on which his shop is carried on. Employers
of this class are usually tenants, who rent by the week
or month, and move upon the shortest notice. To illus-
trate : There is at 1C5 West Twelfth Street a crowded
tenement house, with a Chinese laundry in the ground
floor front, and swarming families alx)ve. In the
ground floor rear is a Jewish butcher-shop, where sau-
sage (not of pork) is made during part of the year; but
at midsummer, meat is roasted to supply the demand of
a large surrounding colony of Russian Jews. Over this
butcher-shop is a tailor-shop, into which the fumes and
heat of the wholesale roasting below rise in the most
overpowering manner. This shop possesses an irre-
sistible attraction to sweaters of several varieties. It
was occupied last summer by a firm of cloakmakers.
When they were required to vacate by reason of its

THE SWEATING-SYSTEM, 85

unsanitary condition, the shop stood empty but a short
■ time, when xtwo coat-making partners moved in with a
, large body of victims. As the landlord could not be
I induced to make any improvement, these also were re-
* quired to move j and the shop is now occupied by a vet-
eran knee-pants maker, who moved into it when required
to separate his shop from his dwelling as a sanitary
measure !

Under a clause of the law which prohibits the use of
any bedroom or kitchen for the manufacture of garments V *
by any person outside of the immediate family living
therein, the inspectors are waging war upon contractors
who employ help in kitchen or bedroom, or in any room
accessible only by going through the living-rooms of the
family. The law is loosely drawn, the difficulties are
many, and progress is slow towards an entire separation ^
of shop and dwelling. Nor will such separation ever be
complete until all manufacture in any tenement house is
prohibited by law.

Meanwhile, every tenement-house* shop is ruinous to
the health of the employees. Basement shops are^
damp, and entail rheumatism. They never afford proper
accommodations for the pressors, the fumes of whose
gasoline stoves and charcoal heaters mingle with the
mouldy smell of the walls and the stuffiness always
found where a number of the very poor are crowded
together. The light in basement shops is bad, and they
are colder in winter and hotter in summer than work-
rooms in ordinary factories.

Attic shops are hot in summer, and usually foul by
reason of the presence of closets to which the water
does not rise. As these shops are often on the fifth

36 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

floor of crowded tenement houses, with narrow wooden
stairs, no flre-escapes, and no sufficient water supply,
the danger of death by fire is greatly aggravated by the
omnipresent presser's stove. Shops on the middle floors
are ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, and share the smell from
the kitchens and drains of surrounding tenement flats.
-< The dye from cheap cloth goods is sometimes poison-
ous to the skin ; and the fluff from such goods inhaled by
the operators is excessively irritating to the membranes,
and gives rise to inflammations of the eye and various
forms of catarrh. All these conditions, taken together
with the exhaustion consequent upon driving foot-power
machines at the highest possible rate of speed, make con-
sumption, either of the lung or intestine, the character-
istic malady of the sweaters' victim^

In the minds of the physicians, nurses, and inspectors
best acquainted with the sweaters' victims of the nine-
teenth ward, there is no doubt that the substitution of
steam-power for foot-power would do more to change
this medical aspect of the case than any other one
change that could be made. This is, however, entirely
hopeless until tenement-house manufacture is prohibited.
Meanwhile, the trade life of the garment worker is prob-
ably shorter than prevails in any other occupation ; 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 family
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 Reese or County Hos-
pital. K the illness prove a long one, recourse must

THE SWEATING-arSTEM. 87

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 private 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 $260 to $300 per annum.

Even without illness in his family, the sweaters' vic-
tim is regularly a pauper during a part of the^^yeai:.
The two seasons of the trade in each year are followed
by 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 Belief. 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
widows 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.
J ^^ It 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 SWEATING-SYSTEM, 39

tion, carried to a point beyond which it is impossible to
go. While the textile mills in which the material for
garments is spun and woven have been constantly en-
larged and improved, both as to the machinery used and
as to the healthfulness of the surroundings of the work-
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 and 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 t-anned 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 ihe 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 aln^ost 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 buttonholer

40 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND 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 ciu'ious example of the isolation of the garment
worker is found in a crowded tenement house in Ewing
Street, known as "Poverty Flat," where five 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 upon 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-power, thus
saving a heavy drain upon their health, and reducing
the number of sweaters' victims found every winter in
his pet hospital. " So far," he replied, " we have found
leg-power 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 labor.
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 oi)erator 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 the
home finisher.

The intimate connection between this decentralization
of the trade and the danger of i nfecti ng the purchaser
with disease prevalent in tenement-house districts, is too
palpable to need comment, and emphasizes the question
why the clothing manufacturer should be permitted to
eliminate the item of rent from his expenses, at the cost
of the trade and of the purchasing 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 tern-
perate, hard-working, and avaricious than any equally
large body of wage-earner^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 gprind-
ing poverty, ending only in death or escape to some
moi-e 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 PAPERS.

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-
shop, 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
1 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, such 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
precaution. This 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 Illiiiois 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, when Mrs. Thomas J. Morgan,
on behalf of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly,
made the first insx)ection 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-HOUSE 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.
I 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 modem business basis as
the factory trades, finds ready response in the minds
of intelligent people. Opposition to legislation looking yj
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
I Act went into effect, and this essay is written 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 effective 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 8WEATIN0-8TSTEM. 45

a transition measure, paving the way for the abolition of
tenement-house manufacture.

This should be a comparatively easy matter in a new .
city where there is no long-standing tradition of genera- V
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 cheap 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.

BIBLIOGBAPHT.

V 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

9

WAQB-EABNINQ CHILDBBN.

BY FLOBENCE KELLEY AND ALZIXA P. STEVENS,

Stait Intpeetor and Assittant Inspector of Workthopt and Factoriea f&r

Illinois,

In 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 no 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

60 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

The census of 1880 gave the total number of wa^e-
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 y
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 ige
of the child at work; and most employers are so fs^
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 the older and densely populated States report
on a greater number of establisliments 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 620
persons, only one a child ; while Pennsylvania's report is
upon 39,366 establishments, employing 620,484 persons,
of whom 22,417 — or about one in 23 — are children.

CHILD-LABOR AND TH£ 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 annual 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 5,426. In five
months' work in 1894 we found 6,576 children in 2,452
establishments employing 68,081 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 well as boys, are counted children. It will be remem-
bered that the census returns place 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. No child under fourteen yean of age shall be employed
in any manufacturing establishment, factory, or workshop within
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, under 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 such
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 inspectors shall
have power to demand a certificate of physical fitness from some
regular physician of good standing in case of children who may
appear to him or Ker 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-EARNING CHILDREN. 63

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, was 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 insi)ector
to the School-Children's Aid Society, or some kindred
organization.* Before the law of 1893 took effect, chil-
dren seeking work in Chicago secured from the city
Board of Education permits, the purport of which was
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 himdreds 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, i

A second good result from our system of handling

* Ko good result having followed these appeals, they are no
longer made [1894].

/

64 HULL-HOUaE 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 fourteen 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 NINETEENTH WABD.

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 trieks
U 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 children more in
I need of effective care than these newsboys and boot-
blacks. They are ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, illiterate,
and wholly untrained 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 day-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 quarter miles. This time she walked ;
i 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* No cars were running at that hour.

56 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

f 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 was violated
in this transaction, as mercantile establishments are not
yet subject to the provisions of the factory act.

Fortunately the development of the pneumgjic 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 day 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 week, 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 themselves 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 with newsboys, bootblacks, and cash-chil-

^ Incidentally it is of interest that this firm was one of the most
I liberal givers of Christmas candy to the poor.

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN, 67

dren, we have been concerned with those who live in
the nineteenth w^ard, 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 to be found in any one
factory in Chicago is in a caramel works in this ward,
where there are from one hundred and ten to two hun-
dred little girls, four to twelve boys, and seventy to one
hundred adults, according to the season of the year.
The building is a six-story brick, well lighted, with good
plumbing and fair ventilation. It has, however, no fire-
escape, and a single wooden stair leading from floor to
floor. In case of fire the inevitable fate of the children
working on the two upper floors is too horrible to con-
template. The box factory is on the fifth floor, and the
heaviest pressure of steam used in boiling the caramels
is all on the top floor. The little girls sit closely packed
at long tables, wrapping and packing the caramels.
They are paid by the piece, and the number of pennies
per thousand paid is just enough to attract the most
ignorant and helpless children in the city.^ Previous to
the passage of the factory law of 1893, it was the rule
of this factory to work the children, for several weeks

^ The affidavits of the children afford an astonishing collection of
unpronounceable names, Polish and Bohemian combinations of con-
sonants, interspersed with Smith. As there is rarely an English-
speaking child in this factory, the prevalence of the Smiths was a
matter of perplexity, until it transpired that notaries, troubled by the
foreign orthography, suggest that the children call themselves by a
more manageable name. This widespread custom greatly increases
the difficulty of prosecutions for violation of the factory law in estah-
lisbments in which the employees are drawn from the foreign colonies.
And in the caramel works, with its polyglot population, the work of
fitting the affidavits to the children is as laborious as it is absurd.

I

I

58 HULL-HOUSE MAPS ASD PAPERS.

before the Christmas holidays, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.,
with twenty minutes for lunch, and no supper, a working
week of eighty-two hours. As this pvertime season co-
incided with the first term of the night-school, the chil-
dren lost their one opportunity. Since the enactment
of the factory law, their working week has consisted of
six days of eight hours each ; a reduction of thirty-four
hours a week.

HEALTH.

It is a lamentable fact, well known to those who
have investigated child-labor, that children are found in
greatest number where the conditions of labor are most
dangerous to life and health. Among the occupations
in which children are most employed in Chicago, and
which most endanger the health, are : The tobacco trade,
nicotine poisoning finding as many victims among fac-
tory children as among the boys who are voluntary
devotees of the weed, consumers of the deadly cigarette
included ; frame gilding, in which work a child's fingers
are stiffened and throat disease is contracted; button-
holing, machine-stitching, and hand-work in tailor or
sweat shops, the machine-work producing spinal curva-
ture, and for girls pelvic disorders also, while the un-
sanitary condition of the shops makes even hand-sewing
dangerous ; bakeries, where children slowly roast before
the ovens; binderies, paper-box and paint factories,
where arsenical paper, rotting paste, and the poison of
the paints are injurious; boiler-plate works, cutlery
works, and metal-stamping works, where the dust pro
duces lung disease; the handling of hot metal, acci-
dents ; the hammering of plate, deafness. In addition
to diseases incidental to trades, there are the conditions

WAGE-EABNING CHILDREN, 59

of bad sanitation and long hours, almost universal in
the factories where children are employed.

The power of the Illinois inspectors, so far as they
have any power to require that only healthy children
shall be employed, and these only in safe and healthy
places, is found in § 4 of the -Workshop and Factories
Act, the last clause, already quoted. What may be
accomplished under this section is indicated by the
following report concerning medical examinations in
the inspector's office, made for the boys by Dr. Bayard
Holmes, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons;
and for the girls by Dr. Josephine Milligan, resident
physician at Hull House : —

During four months 135 factory children were given
medical examinations in the office. The inspectors
required these children to secure health certificates be-
cause they were undersized, or seemed to be ill^or were
working in unwholesome shops, or at dangerous occupa-
tions. They were children sworn by their parents to
be fourteen years of age, or over.

Each child was weighed with and without clothing;
had eyes and ears tested ; heart, lungs, skin, spine, joints,
and nails examined ; and forty measurements taken.

Of the 135 children, 72 were found sufficiently normal
to be allowed to continue work. Of the 63 refused cer-
tificates, 53 were not allowed to work at all, and 10
were stopped working at unwholesome trades, as tobacco-
stripping, grinding in cutlery factory, running machines
by foot-power, and crimping cans; these were advised
to look for more wholesome work.

Of those to whom certificates were refused, 29 were
undersized, otherwise normal; i.e., the parents had

60 HULL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

probably forsworn themselves as to the children's ages.
Certificates were refused because of defects to 34, or
26j\f per cent of the number examined.

Several diseases often exist in the same child. There
were 14 children with spinal curvatures, 12 with heart
murmurs, 6 with lung trouble, 24 with enlarged glands,
25 with defective sight, 6 with defective hearing, and
56 with defective teeth.

The examination of girls resulted as follows : —

From sweat-shops, 30 examined: 5 had spinal curvature; 1, an
organic lesion of the heart (mitral insufficiency); 2, irritable
hearts; 2 were anaemic, and of these 1 had also incipient
phthisis.

Fromiobaceo factories, 11 examined: 1 had spinal curvature; 1,
enlarged glands in neck ^nd axilla; 2, defective sight.

From baking-powder factory, 8 examined: 1 had spinal curva-
ture; 1, enlarged glands; 2, defective sight and slight deafness;
1 had sore hands from using crimping-machine ; 1 had muti-
lated forefinger from a swedging-machine.

From feather-duster factories, 7 examined: 2 had enlarged glands
in the neck.

From gum factory, 4 examined : 1 had spinal curvature.

From candy factories, 16 examined: 2 had diseases of the skin.

From bookbinderies, 4 examined: 1 was anaemic; 1 had enlarged
glands in the neck.

From necktie factory, 1 examined : heart murmur.

From yeast factory, 1 examined : normal.

From cracker bakery, 1 examined: undersized, otherwise normal.

From box factory, 1 examined : had organic lesion of the heart.

From popcorn factory, 1 examined: anaemic.

Total number of girls examined, 85; certificates
granted, 50 ; certificates refused, 35.

The examination of boys resulted as follows : —

From sweat-shops, 6 examined: 3 had spinal curvature; 1, hernia;
2, enlarged glands.

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN, 61

From cutlery factory, 12 examined: 5 had enlarged glands; 3,

tuberculosis; 2, spinal curvature.
From tobacco factories, examined : 4 had enlarged glands.
From metal-stamping factories, 10 examined: 2 had enlarged

glands; 1, bronchitis; 1, tuberculosis; 1, spinal curvature; 1,

syphilis.
From picture-frame factories, 3 examined: 1 was anaemic and

had enlarged glands; 1, tuberculosis.
From candy factories, 2 examined: 1 had skin eruption.
From cracker bakery, 1 examined: had phthisis.
From photographic enlargement shop, 1 examined : was aniemic

and scrofulous.
From glass-sign shop, shoe-shop, cabinet-shop, organ-factory,

1 boy in each : found normal.
Not working, 2 examined: found normal.

Total number of boys examined, 60; certificates
granted, 22 ; certificates refused, 28.

This record, formed in four months by volunteer work
done by two busy physicians in the intervals of private
practice, indicates an appalling deterioration of the
rising generation of the wage-earning class. The hu-
man product of our industry is an army of toiling
children, undersized, rachitic, deformed, predisposed toj
consumption, if not already tuberculous. Permanently
enfeebled by the labor imposed upon them during the
critical years of development, these children will inevi-
tably fail in the early years of manhood and woman-
hood. They are now a long way upon the road to
becoming burdens upon society, lifelong victims of the
poverty of their childhood, and the greed which sacri-
fices the sacred right of children to school-life and
healthful leisure.

Of the reckless employment of children in injurious
occupations the following are examples : —

\

62 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

Jaroslav Hiiptuk, a feeble-minded dwarf, whose affida-
vit shows him to be nearly sixteen years of age. This
child weighed and measured almost exactly the same as
a normal boy aged eight years and three months. Jaros-
lav can neither read nor write in any language, nor speak
a consecutive sentence. Besides being dwarfed, he is so
deformed as to be a monstrosity. Yet, with all these
disqualifications for any kind of w^ork, he has been em-
ployed* for several years at an emery-wheel in a cutlery
works in the nineteenth ward, finishing knife-blades and
bone handles, until, in addition to his other misfortunes,
he is now tuberculous. Dr. Holmes, having examined
this boy, pronounced him unfit for work of any kind. His
mother appealed from this to a medical college, where,
however, the examining physician not only refused the
lad a medical certificate of physical fitness for work, but
exhibited him to the students as a monstrosity worthy
of careful observation.

The kind of grinding at which this boy was employed
has been prohibited in England for minors since 1863,
by reason of the prevalence of grinders' phthisis among
those who begin the work young. And no boy, however
free from Huptuk's individual disabilities, can g^w up
a strong man in this nineteenth ward cutlery, because
no officer of the State can require the walls to be white-
washed, and the grinding and finishing rooms to be ven-
tilated with suction pipes for withdrawing steel and
bone dust from the atmosphere, as it is the duty of the
English inspectors to do in English cutleries employing
only adults.

Joseph Poderovsky, aged fourteen years, was found by
a deputy inspector running a heavy buttonhole machine

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 63

by foot-power at 204 West Taylor Street, in the shop of
Michael Freeman. The child was required to report for
examination, and pronounced by the examining physi-
cian, rachitic, and af9.icted with a double lateral curvature
of the spine. He was ordered discharged, and prohibited
from working in any tailor-shop. A few days later he
was found at work at the same machine. A warrant was
sworn out for the arrest of the employer; but before it
could be served the man left the State. This boy has a
father in comfortable circumstances, and two adult able-
bodied brothers.

Bennie Kelman, Kussian Jew, four years in Chicago,
was found running a heavy sewing-machine by foot-
power in a sweat-shop of the nineteenth ward where
knee-pants are made. A health certificate was required,
and the medical examination revealed a severe rupture.
Careful questioning of the boy and his mother elicited
the fact that he had been put to work in a boiler factory
two years before, when just thirteen years old, and had
injured himself lifting heavy masses of iron. Nothing
had been done for the case ; no one in the family spoke
any English, or knew how help could be obtained. The
sight test showed that the boy did not know his letters
in English, though he said that he could read Jewish
jargon. He was sent to the College of Physicians and
Surgeons for treatment, and forbidden work.

If health certificates are granted to wage-earning chil-
dren merely pro forma, upon the representation of the
employer or the child, the object of the law is nullified.
The physician who grasps the situation, and appreciates
the humane intent of the law, will always find time
to visit the factory and see under what conditions the

64 HULL^HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

child is working. Otherwise his certificate may be worse
than valueless, and work a positive injury to a child
whom the inspectors are trying to save from an injuri-
ous occupation. Thus, a healthy child may wish to enter
a cracker bakery ; and unless the physician visits it, and
Isees the dwarfish boys slowly roasting before the ovens,
in the midst of unguarded belting and shafting, a danger
to health which men refuse to incur, he may be inclined
to grant the certificate, and thereby deprive the child of
the only safeguard to health which the State affords
him. Similar danger exists in regard to tobacco, picture-
frame, box, metal-stamping, and wood-working factories.

The following example of the reckless issuance of cer-
tificates is of interest here, the child being a resident of
the nineteenth ward, employed in this ward, and receiving
the certificates to be subsequently quoted from physicians
living and practising in this ward : —

Annie Cihlar, a delicate-looking little girl, was found
working at 144 West Taylor Street, in a badly ventilated
tailor-shop, in a building in the rear of a city lot, with
windows on alley, and a tenement house in front. The
bad location and atmosphere of the shop, and the stoop-
ing position of the child over her work, led the inspector
to demand a health certificate. Examination at the in-
spector's office revealed rachitis and an antero-posterior
curvature of the spine, one shoulder an inch higher than
the other, and the child decidedly below the standard
weight. Dr. Milligan indorsed upon the age affidavit:
" It is my opinion this child is physically incapable of
working in any tailor-shop." The employer was notified
to discharge the child. A few days later she was found
at work in the same place, and the contractor produced

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN 65

the following certificate, written upon the prescription
blank of a physician in good and regular standing:
" This is to certify that I have examined Annie Cihlar,
and found her in a physiological condition." A test case
was made to ascertain the value of the medical certificate
clause, and the judge decided that this certificate was
void, and imposed a fine upon the employer for failing
to obtain a certificate in accordance with the wording of
the law. The child then went to another physician, and
obtained the following certificate : " To whom it may
concern : This is to certify that I have this day examined
^^ Annie Cihlar, and find her, in my opinion, healthy. She
is well-developed for her age ; muscular system in good
condition ; muscles are hard and solid ; lungs and heart
are normal. The muscles of right side of trunk are
better developed than upon the left side, which has a
tendency to draw spine to that side. I cannot find no
desease [sic] of the spine." The sweater, taught by ex-
perience, declined to re-engage this child until this cer-
tificate was approved by the inspector, and the inspector
of course refused to approve it.

j DAXOER OP MUTILATION AND DEATH.

! Not always, however, does the illiteracy of a physician

afford an opportunity to have a certificate issued by him
declared worthless. If the certificate formally meets
the requirement of the law, the child must be left at
work, no matter what the effect upon its health, present
and future. The same is true where inspectors have
tried to save children from danger to life and limb, by
requiring health certificates for them when found work-
ing amidst dangerous machinery. There is in the Illinois

66 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

•

law no provision for the safeguarding of macliinery ; and
if a physician issues a certificate to a child merely because
it is for the moment in good health, with no knowledge
of the dangerous occupation of the child, the inspector,
under the present law, is powerless. An example is
afforded by a stamping-factory of this ward. The in-
spector called the attention of the head of the firm to
the danger to which employees were subjected, because
of unguarded shafting and machinery, and required a
health certificate for every minor employed there. A
week later a deputy inspector went to this factory, and
found twenty-five health certificates, in proper form, on
file. One of these certificates was already superfluous.
The boy for whom it had been obtained had been killed
in the factory the day before. Within two years two
boys have been killed outright, and several mutilated
in this factory. The last boy killed had lost three fin- I
gers at his machine only a few months before his death.
One machine used in the stamping-works consists of an
endless chain revolving over a trough filled with melted
solder. In this trough cans are kept moving in un-
broken procession, revolving as they go. At each end
of the trough stands a boy with a little iron poker,
made for the purpose of keeping the cans in their places
and pulling them out at the end. But the poker is not
always quick enough, and the boy's hand is apt to get
into contact with the melting fluid. In preparation for
this danger the lads wrap their hands before beginning
work ; but this precaution is only good for minor bums,
and the real danger to the child is that he may lose
a hand outright. This machine has been superseded in
the stamping- works, of more progressive manufacturers

WAOE-EARNINO CUILBBEN. 67

•

by a self-actor, which may be made free from danger to
an employee;, but this is expensive, and children of the
class employed at the stamping-works are so thoroughly
defenceless by reason of poverty and ignorance of the
laws and language of the country, that the company finds
it cheaper to use the old-fashioned machine, and take the
risk of damage suits, than to pay for the more modern
solderer. The metal-stamping trade, like the candy,
paper-box, and garment trades, is without organization,
and the children employed in it suffer accordingly. This
company employs a large body of recently immigrated
Russian and Bohemian men, boys, and girls, many of
whom are wholly illiterate ; and even if they can read
their own language, this is of little avail for reading the
terms of the contract, printed in English, under which
they are employed, or the card of directions which each
one is required to carry in his or her pocket, in order
that the company may prove, in case of injury to an
employee, that notice of the danger had been given, and
that the injury was therefore no fault of the company,
but solely due to the recklessness of the boy or girl.

Of the rules printed on these cards, one reads as
follows : —

11. All employees are strictly forbidden placing their hands
under the dies ; and all employees, other than those whose duty
it is to repair or clean machines, are strictly forbidden to place
their hands or any part of their body in contact with or within
reach of those portions of the machinery intended to be in motion
when the machinery is in operation, or in contact with, or in
reach of the shafting; and this applies to machinery in operation
and not in operation. It is dangerous to disobey this rule.

For middle-aged men, self-possessed and cautious, able
to read these rules and ponder them, it would still be a

68 nuLir-nousE maps and papers,

grewsome thought that the penalty of violation may be
instant death; but where the employees are growing
lads, many of them unable to read at all, and all at
the age when risk is enticing, and the most urgent
warning is often a stimulus to wayward acts, what
excuse can be offered for supplying machinery lack-
ing in any most trifling essential of safeguard ? Yet
these rules themselves announce that the surroundings
of these boys are so fraught with danger, that a whole
code of fourteen rules and regulations is needful to pro-
tect the pockets of the company in the probable event
of injury to the children. There are other wealthy cor-
porations and firms in Chicago to-day holding contracts
with the parents or guardians of employed children,
and with casualty insurance companies, releasing the
employers from liability in case of accident to the
child. Does any one suppose that an employer would
hold such contracts unless accidents to children in his
employ were numerous, and might be made costly ?

Ingenious safeguards are a part of the construction
of machinery in modern plants ; but many factories are
operated without such improvements, and expose em-
ployees, old and young, to constant danger of death or
mutilation. Even where the latest patents in safeguard-
ing are found, accidents are possible if operators are
careless. In a factory where accidents are of almost
daily occurrence among the children employed, we are
told, " They never get hurt till they get careless." This
is no doubt true ; but if it be offered as an excuse
for the mutilation of children, it is an aggravation of,
rather than an excuse for, the crime against the child*
To be care-free is one of tie prerogatives of childhood*

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 69

MIGRATION OF THE CHILDREN.

Nothing in our work has been more of a revelation
than the migratory method pursued by the children,
which forever disposes of the only argument in favor of
child-labor that before seemed valid; namely, that the
work afforded a sort of industrial education for the boy
or girl who must depend upon manual labor for liveli-
hood in adult years. They talk with insufficient knowl-
edge who say it is an advantage to boys and girls to
work because they have "a steady occupation," a "chance •*
to learn a trade." The places where boys and girls are
learning trades are the exception. The places where
fortunes are being built up by employing them in droves
are the ones where most of them are found working. In
these the condition of work and wages is so unsatisfac-
tory that employment in them is a mere makeshift.
One place will be no better than another, and one change
will follow another. It is not a trade that is learned in
the great workshops where child-labor is the foundation
of a company's riches. What the child does leam is in- *
stability, unthrift, trifling with opportunity.

On Aug. 23, 1893, an inspection of a candy factory
showed 80 children employed under sixteen years.
Their affidavits were examined, 63 of them were found
correct, and were so stamped ; and 17 children unpro-
vided with affidavits were sent home. On September 8
another inspector found 71 children at work in this fac-
tory, with 65 affidavits awaiting inspection, only one of
which had the stamp of the previous inspection. The
70 children were a new lot, and all but one of those
at work there two weeks before had flitted off to other

70 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

work. In the same factory on September 11, three days
later, — and one of these a Sunday, — a third inspector
found 119 children at work, and, of course, another lot
of affidavits, requiring the employer to make new wall
records and a new office register. This candy manufac^
turer now aims to employ only girls over sixteen years.
He will find plenty of them anxious to obtain work ;
but he cannot get them at four and one-half cents an
hour, which is the average wage of the little children
employed in this trade.

It is a matter of the rarest occurrence to find a set of
children who have been working together two months
in any factory. They are here to-day and gone to-
morrow ; and, while their very instability saves them
from the specific poison of each trade, it promises an
army of incapables, to be supported as tramps and pau*
pers. The child who handles arsenical paper in a box-
factory long enough, becomes a hopeless invalid. The
boy who gilds cheap frames with mercurial gilding,
loses the use of his arm, and acquires incurable throat
troubles. The tobacco girls suffer nicotine poisoning;
the foot-power sewing-machine girl is a lifelong victim
of pelvic disorders. But the boy or girl who drifts
through all these occupations, learning no one trade,
earning no steady wage, forming no lasting associations,
must end as a shiftless bungler, Jack-of -all-trades, master
of none, ruined in mind and character, as the more abid-
ing worker is enfeebled or crippled in body.

There are factories in which dissolute adults are em-
ployed among children, and sow their moral pestilence
unchecked ; where petty bosses tempt young girls to
evil courses, and the example of trifling favors shown

wage-eahning children. 71

one weak girl who yields demoralizes many more.
There are factories where the very sanitary arrange-
ments expose children to temptation and to disease, and
the rules violate their natural modesty. There are
factories in which children are worked into the late
evening hours, and then turned out unprotected, to seek
their homes by streets where the immoral side of life is
at such hours openly flaunted, and vicious lures draw
the unwary feet of tired boys and girls down to moral
death. There are factories in which the entire roll of
female help is made up of young girls, and these girls
are grouped at work with men so vile that the presence
of a woman of mature years scarcely serves to check
their ribaldry. There are factories where one of the
hourly occupations of little boys and girls is to run to
a beer saloon with the pails of the older workmen.
These are mere outlines of what the factory inspector
sees and knows of the environment of a child in the
class of factories owned by employers who batten on
child-labor.

CAUSES AND REMEDIES.

While it is true, as has been shown, that the indus-
tries of Illinois are essentially men's trades, yet there
are here, as in all American industrial communities,
occupations employing almost no men, trades known as
"baby-trades." These are the candy, the tobacco and
snuff, and the paper-box trades. Although in the wood
and metal trades, thanks to the powerful organizations
of men, the number of children relatively to men is
small, yet certain branches, and certain factories within
these branches, employ children in peculiarly injurious
ways.

72 nULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

It has been found in the case of the cutlery and
stamping works that some of the children working for
wages are orphans and half -orphans, but a large majority
are the children of men employed in industries with-
out strong labor organizations, such as laborers, lum-
ber-shovers, or employees in the garment trades. In
an incredibly large proportion of cases, the fathers of
young wage-earning children not only do not support
the family, but are themselves supported by it, being
superannuated early in the forties by the exhaustion
characteristic of the garment trades, or the rheumatism
of the ditcher and sewer-digger, and various other sorts
of out-door workers ; or by that loss of a limb which is
regarded as a regular risk in the building-trades and
among railroad hands. Long years of consumption
make hundreds of fathers burdens on their younger
children. Some of the children, however, principally
Italians, Bohemians, and Germans, are sent to work by
their parents out of sheer excess of thrift, perhaps in
order to pay off a mortgage upon some tenement house.
In hundreds of cases during 1893-1894 the children left
school and went to work because the father, previously
the sole support of the family, was now among the un-
employed. This is a lasting injury wrought by every-t-
industrial crisis ; for the children so withdrawn from
school are ashamed to return, after prolonged absence,
to a lower class ; and, having tasted the excitement of
factory-life and partial self-support, are unfitted for any-
thing else. The growth of child-labor during these
months has been very marked, the demand for children
increasing in the universal effort to reduce expenses by
cutting wages; so that it was a matter of common

WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN. 73

remark that in any given trade in which children were
employed, that factory was busiest which employed
fewest adults. In general, however, it remains true,
that in the industries of Illinois there is no need in
the nature of the work to be performed for any charac-
teristic quality of children. The presence of the chil-
dren in the industries is more by reason of poverty of
their families than of any technical requirements of the
industries themselves. Everything done by children
under sixteen years of age could be quite as swiftly
done by young people between sixteen and eighteen
years. As has already been indicated, the question of
child-labor in Illinois is primarily a question of the
wages of the fathers of families in the unorganized
trades ; and, secondarily, it is a consequence of the pre.
mature disablement of the men upon whom the support
of the children would normally fall.

Where a trade is well organized, few children are to
be found at work in it. But where a trade is in the
hands of women, it is never strongly organized ; and the
women neither keep the children out of the shops nor
demand and obtain wholesome conditions of work. This
is conspicuously true in the garment trades, in which
women and children outnumber the men by two to one ;
while hours are longer, sanitary conditions are inferior,
and the amount of work required disproportionate to the
strength of the workers, to a greater degree than is true
in any other occupation. If no child under sixteen were
employed after to-morrow, there would be a marked dif-
ference in certain limited trades in which the labor of
fourteen-year-old children abounds. But it is doubt-
ful whether there would be a perceptible rise in wages,

^

r

74 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

because of the total lack of organization among the
girls between sixteen and twenty with whom the chil-
dren have hitherto competed, and who w^ould merely be
somewhat increased in number in consequence of the
discharge of the children. It is for the sake of the chil-
dren themselves that they should be removed from the
labor market and kept in school, far more than for the
sake of the effect that they have upon the condition of
the adults with whom they compete.

If, however, we take this ground, that the prohibition
of child-labor is a humanitarian measure, to be adopted
in the interest of the children themselves, we must then
be consistent, and make provision for them, so that they
shall not suffer hardship worse than that from which
we aim to shield them. We have seen that the trades
in which children abound are the most injurious and
least suitable for them. The wages paid children range
from 40 cents a week to $4.00 a week, taking the whole
6,576 children together.

In some cases, undoubtedly, in which a young child
is withdrawn from work by the law, an older brother or
sister steps into the place thus left vacant. But this
compensation does not always take place in the same
family, and the deficit would have to be made good in
many cases. Why should this not be accomplished by
means of scholarships in the upper-grade grammar
schools and manual-training schools, just as the scholar-
ships are provided to-day in universities and theologi-
cal seminaries? Would not such provision be vastly
cheaper in the end than the care of the consumptive
young grinders ? or than the provision which will be
inevitably required for the support of the cripples turned

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WAGE-EARNING CHILDREN, 75

oat 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. We need to have : (1) The
minimum age for work fixed at sixteen ; (2) School i
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 commimity
upon which they will later be burdens, and to the trade
which they demoralize. They learn nothing valuable ;

'^,

lM^^^^i^H||H^^^B''V' m

76 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

they shorten the average of the trade life, and thej
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 daU to Nov. dO,
1802.

Report Chief 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.

Symposimn 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. Wllloughby and Clare de Graffen-
reld, 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.

BECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES OF CLOAK-
MAKERS IN CHICAGO, COMPARED WITH
THOSE OF THAT TRADE IN NEW YORK

BBOBIFTS AND EXPENDITURES OF CLOAKMAKBBS IN

CHICAGK). COMPARED WITH THOSE OF THAT

TRADE IN NEW YORK.^

BY ISABEL EATON.
Dutton FelUnOt 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 YORK.

The computations in New 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 $11.65

Fallen in 1893-1894 to 4.92

Regular yearly income of family (of 4.4 persons) . 323.07

Fallen in 1893-1894 to 127.92

Regular weekly income (distinguished from weekly

wage)* 6.21

Fallen in 1893-1894 to 2.46

The one hundred and fifty schedules embraced infor-

^ Taken from material collected daring three months* residence
at Hull-Honse.

' Weekly wage should be distinguished from weekly incotne, the first
being the average amount earned in a week of the working-season,

79

80 HULL-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, 1^455.19; 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 indiTidual income f73.43

Average weekly individual income 1.41

Average yearly individnal 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 A of the yearly income. As the working-year sel-
dom lasts more than eight months, the weekly income would range
from two-thirds (A) 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.

-^srr^

RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES. 81

The following shows the cost of living : —

Average yearly cost of food for a family of 4.4

persons ($5.60 a week) $201.20

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 1803,

Percentage of total income spent in rent during 1803-1804,
when practically no cloaks were made, 06%.^

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 $6.50 or $7.00 weekly. Obtain-
ing from this estimate a mean wage, and computing from

* In many cases the computations show $108 yearly rent, and
between $75 and $100 yearly earnings, these beinfc» 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 : —

CtOAXMJJLMMB IH CBIOAOO.

TXAKI.T
IMOOMK.

Wkkxlt
waos.

WXKKLT
INOOIUC.

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-workeiB on Cloaks

Girls employed as finishers ....

Arerage 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 exx>enditnre of cloakmakers (family men) 440.04

Yearly expenditm^ of cloakmakers (single men) . . 255.44

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 91.25 before the crisis, in August, 1894, brought

BECEIPT8 AND EXPENDITURES.

83

65 or 75 cents. A street jacket which formerly brought
the tailor 45 cents, brought in August, 1894, 25 cents.
One that brought 65 cents, brought in August, 1894, 35
cents. A coat which brought $1.12, 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 :

5

-1

1

ATBBAOB

Tkably Imoomb
at this bate.

1'

at

Months

Employed

TUIS Tbab.

1
1

ATBBAOB
NUMIIKB IN

Debt.

4.77

1.19

S9.59

8335.65

$6.45

11

4.38

3.41

38.47

52%

Mr. Bisno'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 iu

-J^,

84 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

October, 1894, both which 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 OP WORK.

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
usually before answering, the workman looks at the
sweater, who stands behind the statistician's shoulder
(ostensibly interested in examining his record), and
from him seems to discover in one glance how 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 EXPENDITURES, 85

at five. The general time is five o'clock all the year
around in good times, winter and summer ; and if the
boss will give them gaslight some will go even earlier
than three o'clock."

In regard to extreme cases of long hours 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 up
for the holiday." He says this is the usual thing in
this particular Bowery sweat-shop. In speaking of this
friend of his he said further : '< Once he told me that he
had been working thirty-eight hours steady. He 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 Chicago 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 P.M.

86 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

\

•rf

INDEBTEDNESS.

' Mr. Ehrenpreis of the Chicago Cutters' Union agrees
with others in 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 following
case came under the notice of a Hull House resident,
during the winter of 1893-1894 : a loan of $25 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 wages, 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 AND EXPENDITURES. 87

■which here, as in New York, appears to be very near
the average, amounts to $255.44 for living expenses in
the year. Setting this against the single 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 clothing 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 New York cloakmaker is $148.09, —
an advantage of about $30 to the Chicagoan.

RENTS.

The dwelling-rooms of the cloakmakers in Chicago are
better than those in New York 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 pays $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 opposed to 38
per cent in New York. A comparison of these percent-
ages with the approved percentage of income paid for

^r

88 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

rent in France, and that accepted by our own Labor
Department, which is 14| 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.

■z-sr-xsg^mB

V.

THE CHICAGO GHETTO.

L..PJ

THB C£[ICAOO GHETTO.
BY CHARLES ZEUBLIX.

r Two families constituted the Jewish population of
\ Chicago in 1843, when the first 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 under the name
Kehillath Ansh^ Maariv (Congregation of the Men of
Obscurity). The first religious services were held at
the corner of Lake and Wells Streets. In 1849 a syna-
gogue was erected on Clark Street, between Quincy and
Jackson. It was from the ranks of the Kehillath Ansh6
Maariv Congregation that Reform Judaism in Chicago
sprung. A few young men in this congregation formed
a society called the Eeform Association, to introduce
changes into the services and doctrines. Unsuccessful
in this, they seceded in 1861, and organized the Sinai
Congregation, the first Chicago organization of Reform
Judaism.

The location of the synagogues marks the region
occupied by the Jewish colony. Before the fire they
were situated in what is now the chief business district
of the city. A whole chapter of social development

91

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 fonner 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 pynagogues, with one exception, were
those of Grerman Jews ; and the exception was that of
a Prussian Polish Congregation, B'nai Sholom (Sons
of Peace). Although there were reported to be 12,000l
Jews in Chicago in 1868, the recent growth of the pres- 1
ent Ghetto is seen when 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 Christian Brotherhood. 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 injury which it

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 98

is within the province of this article to consider. The
official report of the "Brotherhood" speaks for itself.
In 1869, 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 Polk 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 presence of

V

94 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

an anarchistic contingent, which 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
filthier. 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 was
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 workshop 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, with full measure,

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 96

pressed down and running over. In all but the severest
weather the streets swarm with children day and night.
On bright days groups of advdts join the multitude, espe-
cially on Saturday and Sunday, or on the Jewish holi-
days. In bad weather the steaming windows show the
over-crowde4 rooms within. A morning walk impresses
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. The figures of the Board
of Health are not minute 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 city. The sixteenth ward's popu-
lation is chiefly Polish and Grerman, 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

HXTLL-B0U8E MAPS AND PAPERS.

Orsm
SlTxAsa.

4 AMO SL

•

DZATH RaTB. 1

Okkxkai.

Uin>BB

5 YKAXB.

Ward VII.
Ward XVI.
WardXrX.

600
560
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
exclusiveness, 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 only that we may do justice to the Jew
in these latter days of anti-Semitism, but also because of
the magnitude of the problem 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 pctss for a man," the open sesame for the inhabit-
ant of the Ghetto is, ''Grod 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 Qregorovios, " Der Ghetto and die Jnden in Rom '* (Wander-
jahre, !.); Booth, " Labor and Life of the People in London," toI. i.
(chap, on the Jews by Beatrice Potter Webb) ; Century Magazine, 1882,
*' The Jews in New York; " Biis, " How the Other Half Lives," chaps.
X., xi.; Fontm, Jaly, 1893, "The Russian Jew;" Zangwill, " Chil-
dren of the Ghetto," 2 vols. Philipsou, " Old European Jewries."

THE CHICAGO GHETTO, 97

What are the habits and institutions peculiar to the
Chicago Ghetto ?

Industrial. TJie 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 " f romm " (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 Mosaic 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 AND PAPERS,

not as a rule live in the Ghetto. He, as well as the
owner of the pawn-shop, lives over, behind, or near Ixis
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
pertinacity 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. Righteous
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 upon 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

s y

• • • . ,

. • • >

» » . .

- - w

THE CHICAGO GHETTO, 99

individual benefit, but 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 4,596; 711 did
not call to know the result of the organization's effort ;
120 were not found employment ; 857 refused the work
offered. These applicants represented thirteen nation-
alities of Jews, of which 2,733 were Russians, 1,929
from Germany and Austria. In 1893 there were 676
applicants from Russia, as compared with 580 in 1892,
342 in 1891, and 191 in 1890. Among the applicants in
1893, the occupations recorded for which no positions
were available were, pedler, 44 ; merchant, 146 ; stu-
dent, 10 ; distiller, 4 ; miller and physician each 1.
It is to the credit of the unemployed Jews to say that
while 191 applied for positions as laborers or porters,
364 accepted such positions. 76 clerkships were pro-
vided when there had been 88 applications. Of the
applicants as bookbinders, cabinetmakers, coppersmiths,
blacksmiths, tinsmiths, locksmiths, machinists, painters,
shoemakers, tailors, jewellers, printers, watchmakers,
iron-moulders, butchers, and furriers, only 20 out of 224
failed to find the employment they desired. This is
not only creditable to the bureau, but shows versatility
in the Jew.

In the year 1891 a society was organized to care for
the large number of Russian Jews driven to Chicago by

n

• - •

• • •

• •• •

•

100 HULL-BOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

the renewed persecutions. For eighteen months the
Society in Aid of Russian Refugees succeeded in help-
ing new arrivals, ignorant of language and customs, and
without friends. The chief efforts of the society were
directed to sending the refugees to homes in smaller
cities or in the country. . Nearly 1,000 persons were dis-
tributed in twenty-four States and Territories, of whom
129 returned unable to find satisfactory employment.
The officers of the organization also found employment
for over 500 persons during the brief existence of the
society. The work thus accomplished during an emer-
gency is a pertinent suggestion of a needful enterprise
I in Chicago and other large cities. The emigration so-

^ cieties of England accomplish a work which is, if pos-

sible, even more needed in the rapidly growing American
cities.

The chief labor organizations of the Jews are the
Cigarmakers' Union and the Cloakmakers' Union.
While these organizations are taxed to keep wages
above starvation level, they are composed of an un-
usually intelligent set of men, when their wages and
hours are considered.

Social, The social institutions of the Ghetto are not
numerous, but for the most part more helpful than simi-
lar institutions in other districts. Perhaps the most in-
teresting is the latest acquisition, the Maxwell Street
Settlement. At the suggestion of a prominent Jewish
rabbi, two young college-bred Jews have taken up resi-
dence in the heart of the Ghetto. Another resident has
been added since the work commenced. A private resi-
dence of a dozen rooms was secured, which has served
their purpose during the initial stages of the work ; but

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 101

its capacity is already taxed. The readiness with which
the neighborhood accepted the hospitality of the settle-
ment speaks volumes for the efficiency of the residents
and the responsiveness of the Jewish community. The
usual social efforts of a settlement are put forth ; but,
as is natural in a new enterprise, the best work thus far
has been educational. Among the more formal social
activities may be mentioned three boys' and three girls'
clubs, with a total membership of eighty-five, who meet
weekly to read juvenile literature ; an older girls' club of
ten members, and an occasional neighborhood social gath-
ering. Owing to the unusual distress of last winter
(1893-1894), some relief-work has been forced upon the
settlement ; but this has been done by a corps of visitors
without in any way encroaching on the time of the other
workers. The settlement is demonstrating the faith of
a growing number of believers in the Russian Jew, that
with the removal of the despotism of his native land
his ambition and tenacity will make of him a splendid
American, unless he falls a victim to the despotism of
commercialism.

One of the indirect benefits of the settlement has been
the organization of the Self Educational Club by some
of the more intelligent, progressive Jews of the Ghetto,
with a view to providing social and educational oppor-
tunities for themselves. Club-rooms have been secured
at 572 South Halsted Street, and a genuine neighbor-
hood guild is being developed. A musicale every Satur-
day evening brings the members together weekly for
social intercourse. The club is supported by a member-
ship fee of fifty cents, and dues of ten cents a week.

lifetropolitan Hall, on Jefferson Street, is the dramatic

102 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

and operatic centre of the Ghetto. The contrast be-
tween this theatre and any other place of amusement in
a district of equal poyerty is another testimony to the
latent tastes of the Jew. It is one of the best places to
view the characteristics of the community, if, indeed, the

•

amusements of a people do not always reveal the inner
man relaxed as nothing else does. It is a genuine Volks-
tfieater. One leaves America almost before entering the
theatre. Large sig^s in Hebrew characters announce
the plays, which are given on Wednesday, Saturday, and
Sunday evenings. Twenty-five cents admits one to the
best seat in the house. The floor is level; the stage
quite a little elevated ; there are quasi boxes on each
side, and a well-filled gallery is seen in the rear. The dec-
orations are abominable, but American and not Jewish.
The only other American incident is the cat-call, which
is periodically heard from the gallery on the appearance
of the villain. The play, which gives a large place to
the chorus, suggestive rather of the Greek drama than
the opera, is genuinely Jewish, and the language, the
Jewish jargon (jQdisch). The better type of play usu-
ally narrates the experiences of one of the old Jewish
heroes, portraying to the intense satisfaction of the audi-
ence his triumphs over one of the historic oppressors
of the Jews. The poorer i$lays, which never descend to
the level of the American farce comedy, to say nothing
of burlesque, treat, for example, of the experiences of a
recent immigrant in adapting himself to the customs of
his new home. The delightful unconventionality of the
place is well exhibited between the acts when the vendor
of cakes and confections and fruits makes his rounds.
The munching of these delicacies may then be heard.

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 103

•

accompanied by the explosions of pop-bottles. The
noise of these latter falling to the floor often disturbs
the more sedate in the midst of some very solemn part.
To one who looks below the surface, however, there is
almost unalloyed delight in the pure, simple amusements
of these people, marred only by the regret that they are
not hearing their old classic language instead of the
frightful jargon. Were a beautiful literature being
expounded by these earnest players and singers, the
influence on the auditors would be incalculable. As it
is, the presence of this theatre is a most hopeful social
and educational sign.

Balls are not so numerous in the Ghetto as in other
foreign quarters, but they seem to be equally demoral-
izing. There is a seriousness in the temper of these
people which places some damper on amusements. It is
also true that the home-life removes the necessity for
public amusement so strongly felt by less religious races.
The great centre for social influence among the Jews is
the home. This is admirably illustrated in the devotion
of the children to the home, even after they have lost
the religion of their parents. Many of the agnostics
observe the religious festivals which centre in the home-
circle, simply in honor to their parents. It must of
course be recognized that it is almost impossible to
maintain the old family life in the environment of the
factory system, dependent as it is on the surrender of
the individual to the division of labor, with its long
hours and employment of women. The astonishing fact
ia the preservation of so much of the tradition of the
family in the face of modem social disintegration.

The synagogue is another important social centre. To

104 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPEBS.

those whose chief topic of conversation aside from busi-
ness is the Talmud, it is natural that the Temple should
prove a social inspiration, especially on Saturday and
Sunday. Even more important, because more modest
and more numerous, are the Chevras, or smaller religious
congregations. These meet in some private house or
storeroom appropriately fitted up for religious services.
On Sunday, as well as Saturday and Friday evening, the
men of these congregations spend much of their time dis-
cussing mooted theological points. These religious bodies
are a genuine social factor, although their influence is
certainly for the most part negative, keeping the men
from the saloon or similar social resort, but also hinder-
ing a fuller development of the whole man.

The social influence of the saloon is happily small.
It cannot be ignored; but in summer a visitor to the
Ghetto is struck by the numerous soda-water fountains,
showing the general temperate character of the people.
So far as the saloon is gaining strength it is in opposi-
tion to the traditions of the Jews.

Educational. The first educational force to be men-
tioned in an American city is naturally the public
school. The school provisions in the Ghetto are lament-
ably inadequate. The insufficient accommodation and
poor instruction of the public schools have been supple-
mented by a privately endowed manual-training school,
the << Jewish Training School," which has already
demonstrated the superiority of modem pedagogical
methods, and is, in fact, the educational hope of the
community. On Judd Street, between Jefferson and
Clinton, stands a fine brick building, erected by wealthy
Chicago Jews to overcome the chief deficiency of the

THE CHICAGO GHETTO, 105

persecuted Jew, the lack of industrial adaptability. The
building, which has a seating capacity of eight hun-
dred, contains twenty-two rooms. The machine-shop
accommodates thirty boys, and the joining-shop thirty-
five. There are also moulding, drawing, sewing, and
kindergarten rooms, and a physical and chemical labora-
tory. When the school was opened in October, 1890,
there were sixteen hundred applicants, of whom eleven
hundred were accepted; but lack of accommodation
compelled the sending of two hundred of those in
better circumstances to the public schools. Since then
the enrollment has never been less than nine hundred.
The school is not only accomplishing its mission in pro-
viding the much-needed manual training, but is doing
what the public schools failed to do, destroying the pre-
judice in favor of the private schools, the "Cheder,"
conducted by inexperienced teachers, called by the chil-
dren " Rebbi," but not to be confused with the Babbis.
These Talmud schools, which have not by any means
been exterminated, are held in little stuffy rooms, where,
with insufficient light, young boys ruin their eyesight
over Hebrew characters, distort their minds with rab-
binical casuistry, impair their constitutions in unventi-
lated rooms, and defer the hopes of American citizen-
ship by the substitution of Jtidisch for English. The
able, progressive superintendent of the Jewish Training-
School and his carefully chosen associates are a God-
send to this people.

The Ghetto students who advance to the public high
schools are a great credit to the community, one recently
taking the highest honors in the gift of the West Divis-
ion High School. There were formerly night sessions

106 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

held during the winter at the training-school, but lack
of funds compelled their discontinuance. Many Jews
attend the public night-schools ; and the classes recently
organized at the Maxwell Street Settlement are over-
crowded, although but a very few deserted the public
schools for them. Among the classes at the settlement
are civil government, with an attendance of fourteen,
meeting twice a week ; German, eleven members, twice a
week ; arithmetic, fifteen members, three times a week ;
beginning English, twenty-five members, meeting three
evenings a week; grammar, fifteen members, twice a
week ; George Eliot, fourteen members, twice a week ;
club on questions of the day, ten members, meeting
weekly ; book-keeping, eighteen members, twice a week ;
physical culture, eight members, weekly; and American
history, ten members, weekly. A literary society meets
every Sunday evening ; and a concert is given on the first
Sunday afternoon of the month, the other Sunday after-
noons being devoted to lectures.

The settlement does not monopolize the literary ac-
tivities of the Ghetto. There are other independent
literary societies accomplishing a very desirable work.
There is a society for the study of Hebrew literature.
Lectures are delivered in pure Hebrew, and the minutes
are kept in Hebrew. The Self Educational Club has
classes in United States and Jewish history, civil
government, English language and literature, French,
physiology, bookkeeping, arithmetic, and medical and
pharmaceutical Latin.

The synagogue must be mentioned as an educational
factor, because the magnificent literature of the Hebrews
is there brought before the people, whose literary taste

THE CHICAGO GHEji'O. 107

is well nigh annihilated by the frightful jargon of their
daily conversation.

The Jewish papers, except the small number published
abroad in Hebrew, are even worse in their educational
influence than the American dailies, owing to the added
demoralization of Judisch. All of the Jewish papers
have a too foreign tone ; but happily with the acquisi-
tion of English the Jewish paper losea its interest.

There are one or two reading-rooms, where, in addi-
tion to the current Jewish papers, much good Hebrew
literature is found. These have doubtless a greater so-
cial than educational value.

Political, There are several "orthodox" Republican
and Democratic clubs in the district, organized mainly
through the influence of the ward " heelers." The recent
Jewish immigrant seems to choose the Republican party.
It is not easy to say whether the idea of protection at-
tracts him, or, as has been suggested, he has become
familiar with the term " republican " abroad as con-
trasted with monarchical, while "deihocrat " suggests
social democracy and atheism. His choice is quite
probably a sentimental one. At the opposite pole from
these blind followers of the politician are the anarchists.
There is quite a body of those whose memories of op-
pression form their present political creed. An agita-
tion meeting is held every Sunday in some good-sized
hall, attracting sometimes several hundred Jews. The
anarchism of the leaders is almost purely philosophical,
and the majority of the adherents manifest their belief
simply by neglecting the polls. The socialists probably
outnumber the anarchists by a very small margin. The
leaders are blind in their devotion to the Socialist Labor

108 UVLL-nOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

party, and bitter in their antagonism to the anarchists.
They seem to be at present the political leaven of the
communit}', because they, at least the leaders, have
thought their way to their present position, and they are
not merely dreaming, but are engaged in active politics,
bringing every election not merely votes from the old
parties, but new voters to the polls. They also carry on
agitation meetings on Sunday ; but their educational in-
influence has been, until this year, limited by their
bondage to Continental socialism. During the campaign
of 1894 the socialists aided the People's Party. Poli-
tics cannot be said to be healthy while they are Jewish ;
but the great weakness of the Jewish leaders is their
ignorance of English. Few of them can make a good
address in English. It is some gain, however, to get
the civic centre out of the synagogue ; and it must be
said of the radical political leaders, at least, that they
are no longer the abject slaves of tradition.

Religious. The synagogues and chevras conserve the
religious life of the majority of the inhabitants of the
Ghetto. Their power is not so great as that of the con-
gregations of the old Continental ghettos, or even those
of the present London Jewish quarter ; but no spark of
Reform Judaism has yet entered. The long coats and the
curls before the ears, so familiar in Europe, are seldom
seen in Chicago ; but the Jewish festivals are rigorously
maintained, and the ceremonial resti'ictions observed even
in the more prosperous families, where a Christian ser-
vant helps to tide over the Sabbath without sin as well
as without physical inconvenience. Even the orthodox
cannot deny the growing heterodoxy of the Jews of the
large city, despite the conservative influence of the

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. 109

Ghetto. On the whole, the religion of the Chicago Ghetto
seems to have a hygienic value of a certain kind ; but its
ethical significance is seen only in its eftect on the fam-
ily life, the larger social duties remaining untouched. '
One other good thing ought perhaps to be credited to a
religious inspiration, — the charity of the poor Jews to
their poorer neighbors may originate in religion or in
race. At all events, the Ghetto rabbi is in no sense a
minister. His functions coidd as weU be performed by
a phonograph.

The Hebrew papers also exert a conservative religious
influence.

There is a Hebrew Christian Mission of some impor-
tance on Margaret Street and Fourteenth, near the west-
em limit of the Ghetto. A neat two-story brick building
is devoted to religious meetings, kindergarten, sewing-
classes, and similar work, while the missionary lives on
the second floor. Quite a number of Jews visit this
place. The children are attracted by the friendliness
and cheer of the house and the workers, as well as
by the little forms of bribery that characterize such
enterprises; the older Jews, always eager for religious
discussion, attend the preaching services. A small
number of converts is made, some of them remaining
faithful, but others undoubtedly attracted merely by the
hope of employment or other reward. There can be no
question as to the good intentions of these *' friends " of
the " chosen people ; " but certainly many Jews are pau-
perized by such efforts, as well as by the counter-deeds
of zealous Jews.

The Maxwell Street Settlement and the Self Educa-
tional Club are religiously independent.

110 IIULL-U0U8E MAPS AND PAPERS.

The evils of the Ghetto may be generalized under
twor heads, — the environment, including the wretched
houses, narrow streets, and the conditions of employment,
over which the Jews have little or no control ; and the
conservatism of the majority of the population. Their
conservatism is being slowly undermined. The use of
the jargon in their papers, conversation, the Talmud
schools, business, and the political organizations, is being
counteracted by the social and educational forces already
mentioned, as well as by minor influences. The public
schools ought to be doing much more than they are.
Illiteracy will prevail so long as the municipal conscience
slumbers. Nevertheless, the greatest need of the Ghetto
is its annihilation. The forces working for good in it
are such as are tending to exterminate it. Some of the
brightest minds are leaving the community as they ad-
vance in professional circles, taking prominent positions
as lawyers, physicians, and in the daily press, as well as
in business. The Jewish Training-School is making an
important contribution in preparing the coming genera-
tion for broader fields of industrial activity. The Max-
well Street Settlement is enlarging the social life and
consciousness, ^he socialists are teaching social re-
sponsibility. Some of the native qualities of the Jew,
such as love of home, seriousness, and ambition, are
antagonistic to the existing conditions. It remains to
be seen whether external forces will teach him to expand
both his personal and social horizon, or lead him, as in
the past, to draw himself within his shell. " The pov-
erty of the poor is their destruction." The annihilation
of the Ghetto means wealth to the Jew, the wealth of
Jesus and Kuskiu, that wealth which is life. But the

THE CHICAGO GHETTO. Ill

responsibility is not altogether or chiefly his. The qual-
ities he is seen to possess, even under the distressing en-
vironment of the Chicago Ghetto, would enable any man
to be free were opportunity free. If the versatile, tena-
cious Jew leads us to apprehend this fact, we may find
that even social '^ salvation is of the Jews."

\

VI.

THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO.

!•

THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHIOAOO.
BY JOSEFA HUMPAL ZEMAX.

The neighborhood of Hull-House was once the
Prague of the Bohemian people in Chicago. The dis-
trict extending from Canal to Halsted, and from Ewing
to Twelfth Street, was, before the great fire of 1870, the
largest and best settlement of Bohemians in the city.
When, after that fire, the city began to extend itself
beyond the western limits, and new tracts of land were
measured off into cheap lots, the Bohemians, who love
nature, pure air, and gardens, sold their property in this
crowded part of the city, and moved to the new region,
where they might invest in more land, and so afford the
luxury of a garden. The movement once started, it was
not long before the whole community changed its loca-
tion, and soon there grew up a vast colony, "a city
within a city," spreading from Halsted to Ashland
Avenue, and from Sixteenth to Twentieth Street, and
numbering not less than forty-five thousand Bohemians.

The colony again received a name ; and this time it
was in honor of the second largest city of Bohemia,
Pilzen, or Pilsen. Soon, however, it grew too small for
the flood of Bohemians, which reached its highest tide
in the years 1884-1885, when the greatest percent-
age of the Bohemian emigration tx) the United States
poured into the new and prosperous Chicago. It is now
estimated that there are from sixty to seventy thousand
Bohemians in the city ; and Chicago has the distinction

115

116 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
Douglas 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 homes 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,
cigarmakingy and other humble occupations; and grad-
uates of the University of Prague working tor $2.50
and $4.00 per week.

The emigration from Bohemia increased after every
Continental war, and especially after the Austro-Italian
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 were 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.

The 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, which drives into this country a steady

THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 117

stream of strong, healthy, and able-bodied men. Bohemia
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 sea-voyage. 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. When 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 were 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-UOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

To form at least a small, even if very insufficient, 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 within 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 $107,705.74

The society " Oul " . .

i(

121,224.34

The society " Bohemia" .

((

78,370.00

The society " Domov "

it

80,247.47

The society ** Slavie *' . .

t(

306,4.54.24

Total

>•••••

^94,092.09

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 were
engaged in the various building-trades, as carpenters,
bricklayers, painters ; others, again, were tailors, and
many ordinary laborers working in the lumber-yards;
but after 1878 they began entering as clerks into stores,
law offices, and various other business enterprises, so that
to-day there is not a profession in which Bohemians are
not to be found. The majority of the Bohemians are

^^B

THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 119

artisans, and only some of the peasants 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. Business-men dealing with them
readily acknowledge the <'bad debt'' among the Bohe-
mians to be very rare.

THE 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 conservor
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 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

Two typographical co-operative associations publish
dailies ; one the Fravo-Lidu (" Rights of the People "), the
other, DennirHlasatel ("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 who 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 BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 121

stitute for the walks in the fields ; 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. Among 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 f reethink-
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 wages to the wife or mother. Seldom do the

122 HULL-UOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

children keep their earnings and pay board; they usu-
ally all work and live togethei', 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.

RELIGION.

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 IN CHICAGO. 123

which that of St. Prokopius, corner of Allport and Eigh-
teenth Streets, is the largest and most costly. With
the school-buildings, convent, church, and rich farms, it
has property the value of which exceeds a million dol-
lars. In every parish there is a Bohemian 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 number
not less than two thousand seven hundred.

The Bohemian order of Benedictines of St. Prokopius
parish has founded a Bohemian College, which 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 there are organ-
izations of men and women, many being benevolent,
others more purely social and religious. There are four
Catholic Bohemian newspapers published in Chicago, —
one daily, one children's paper, 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 Krestanski
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 nuLL-uousE maps and papers,

and their fellow-countrymen are more 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
publish 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.

TJie freethinkers have four Bohemian-English schools,
where both Bohemian 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 IN CHICAGO. 126

Bohemian, and then enter the public schools. They
have separate halls, theatres, and societies. When the
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, siipporting schools, etc.

Besides these, there are eleven singing and dramatic
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 Rifle Company, and this was
^the first regiment that went 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 c^ld settlers, before and

126 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

after .the war, were Kepublicans. After the year 1880
flome began to vote the Democratic ticket ; and when in
1883 this party nominated a Bohemian for the office of
alderman, it got the first 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

m

THE BOHEMIAN PEOPLE IN CHICAGO. 127

the service of the city government, engaged in almost
every department.

Since 1874 there has been a Bohemian department in
the Public Library, which now numbers four thousand
books.

The Bohemian Republican League publishes a very
good politico-economic journal 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
readily, 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 forei.ijrners
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 undermine the future good of tliis 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 press 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 Bohemians are free from any such 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.

ES

VII.

EEMARK8 UPON THE ITALIAN COLONY

IN CHICAGO.

BBMABK8 UPON THB ITALIAN COLONY IN CHICAGO.
BY ALESSANDKO MASTRO-VALERIO.

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 quibus. 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 embarkation for America they might be clas-
sified as temporary' immigrants ; but when 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 re-

131

132 UULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

maining Italians. Their children, though American-
born, will alwa^'s be " incorrigible '* Italians because 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 find 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 CHICAGO. 133

for Christmas, and return in March 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 has 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 AND PAPERS.

would have full sway in a more decent manner than
now, when many of them, 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. All
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 any
other American town, except on the Pacific coast.

The Italians of Chicago number 25,000, mostly be-
longing to the peasant class. Those who 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
entrepreneurs 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
$100,000 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 within 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 b)B Italians; also their
lawyers and their undertakers. These streams and
rivulets run into the midst of the mare magnum 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, DeKoven, 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 COLONY IN CHICAGO. 137

windows, which give room for plenty of light and air.
The promiscuity of sex and of strange people 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. ^^ Madonna mia,
qui debbo 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 Se^)-
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 pompa 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 appear-
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 ripianto amartsstmo of
the houses of the same people as I have seen them on
those good Saturdays. Most certainly the same condi-

138 HULL-JJOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

tions would not 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.
By 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 $1.00 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.

L'ltalia, 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 Mayor
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 will answer the question whether Italians have
Americanized themselves, and to what extent.

■^^m^^

/

y

VIII.

THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES.

i

THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES.

BY JULIA C. LATHROP,
Member qf the JlHnoia State Board of Charitiet.

• 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-
em 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 what 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 UULL-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, largely of that type
which is reduced by drink to a squalor 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 economie 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
tong^ies 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 ressort. There is, doubtless, a certain satisfaction
to the philanthropist and the sociologist alike, in having

THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES.

145

touched bottom, reached ultimate facts ; and this in a
sense we have done when we have reached the county
institutions. These are the infirmary, 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 infirmary 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 5,651 admissions during the year 1893, there were
3,563 persons of foreign birth. The nativity records
show that of this number Ireland furnishes 1,457 ; Ger-
many, 727 ; England, ^99 ; 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, with many
well-lighted wards, steam-heated and clean. It is
fronted by a grass plat, with trees and flower-beds, and
the open country stretches back for miles, giving a good
sweep for air and sunshine. There is a separate 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 each 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 superintendent ;

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 regular 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 women 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, l,4o5 men and 396 women.
January 4, 1893, 1,156 men and 380 women.
January 4, 1892, 1,108 men and 321 women.
January 4, 1891, 1,021 men and 469 women.

A curious indication of the effect of hard times is
shown in the sudden increase of 299 in the male popular

THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. 147

tion, and of only 16 among the women, — 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 chapel, in which a kindly old Catholic priest
and various Protestant 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 the sociologist and
statistician.

In a winter so unprecedented as that of 1893-1894,
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 wards alike, the beds are set closely, and at
best allow only a chair and a few feet by the window for
each occupant. Ward 3 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 infirmary 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 residuum 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 Irish woman, a soldier's
willow, 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 again with the elegance
and dignity which only leisure and money can bestow.

^J

\

I

THE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES. 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 only 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. When 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; 1*11 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

/

i

1

150 nULlr-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPEB8.

sorrier for him 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
fitness, 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 COUNTY CHARITIES, 151

infirmary, 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-
firmary, 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 whom 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 Norway with 45 ;
Ireland, 74 ; Poland, 13 ; Bohemia, 8 ; Eussia, 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
bom 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
6,177, 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-
j^nable. 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 asy-
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 COUNTY CIIAEITIE8. 153

given for diuner. 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 butter for all meals. Unfortunately, this
sounds better than it is in fact. Few persons could see
the food as prepared and served (excepting the bread)
without a sense of physical 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 wards and the fact
that they are seriously overcrowded according to mod-
em 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 coimty 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.

THE COOK COUNTY CUAIilTlES. 155

In fact/ 1 mucli prefer it to a similar place in a Kew
York hospital. There about all an interne can do is to
follow after the outside doctors on their rounds, and
watch them, and hear what they say, and see their pre-
scriptions. But here the outside doctors do not visit
regularly, and do not interfere with the interne's treat-
ment." There may be carpers 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 bring 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 privilege, 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 any 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 nVLL-IIOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

beings in existence; and thus incidentally the patient
might be benefited. 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 dijfficult
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 ward 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
support 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 CHARITIES, 157

ground with the hospital. Here the insane are brought
and confined for periods of from twenty-four hours 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
winter 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; and if one could be thus
established, which should have in charge the detention
hospital, it would be a starting-point for better work

158 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

everywhere. 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

TBE COOK COUNTY CHARITIES, 159

later by a paid visitor, upon whose report the fuel and
ration are allowed or refused. Or, if the application
has been granted, the market basket discloses its raison
(Tetrey 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 the 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 be 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 make
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-
dertaker's 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 Vve lost was the only
one that wasn't insured ! "

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 nULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

and the facts justify him. 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 qf 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. We 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. We
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 poorhouse. 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 service ? 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.

sm

IX.

ABT AND LABOR.

ART AND LABOR.
BY ELLEN QATE8 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 unsflaced and unfed, followed by
other souls who lack the impulse his should have given.
And when 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 ugly,
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 Moon, so named in one of the songs
the children sing, was dimly visible in an extreme comer
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 modem 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. We
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 principle* and plan of ^fr. HorsfaH's beneficent work may
be found in his papers entitled, *' The Use of Pictures in Schools/'
" Art in Large Towns/' and '* The Work of the Manchester Art
Museum/' J. E. Cornish, St. Ann's Square, Manchester.

ART AND LABOR, 167

the common life, it has 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 our day, John Ruskin, has
said that << all great art is praise," showing man's pleas-
ure in Grod'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 which 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 heartlessness. 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 Bouen,
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 Kouen 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 incapar
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. We have believed that
we could force men to live without beauty in tKeir 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 gprace 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 mya-
teries plan.

ART AND LABOR. 169

The results should long ago have taught us our mis-
take. But 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 Morris, that no man can execute
artistically what another man plans, unless the work-
man's freedom has been part of the plan. The product
of a machine may be useful, and may serve some pur-
poses 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 which
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 vulgar 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 AND PAPERS.

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 peaisant
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 k;now that in her inmost heart she found it too

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

ART AND LABOR. 171

He not only cannot build it^ he cannot buy 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 affection for the work of his hands, he
could not take it away with hiyn. He would probably
not be permitted, were he inclined, to carve the door-
posts ; and the uncertalinty of tenure would 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 well as his freedom^ is a neces-
sary condition of his being artistic. Ruskin lays it
down as a law 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 abH 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 the
forms and laws of the* creation of which he forms a
part." A rational and disciplined delight in the fornfs
and laws 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 m^ 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 HULL-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 know 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 gfraceful runners and wrest-
lers, solemnly 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 ofiFering to an
offended God, whose laws we have neither rejoiced in
nor obeyed.

Obedience to physical law results always in forms of

ART ANV LABOR, 173

physical beauty ; love of these forms and happy activ-
ity, in artistic expression. From disobedience to law
follows physical ugliness, which inspires nothing 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 which it can be couched, may be pressed into service.

"We're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we We passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted, — better to us,

Which is the same tiling. Art was given for that.'*

«

So it was, — to make us love the lovable. But if we
are made so, too, that we hate for the first 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 HULL-BOUSE MAPS AND 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 with
Him all things are possible, in His eternity, which makes
it endurable to look for one moment upon the starvation
and deg^radation 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 Franqois 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 vvork 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 by the loving mother and whole

ART AND LABOR. 175

docile flock; the father stretching out his arms 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 finally 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 open witnesses, you
have done that, man ! What you have done in dark-
ness, away from the face of these witnesses, my art
cannot say." No 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.

When life reaches a point at which 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

176 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 vecchio
of Florence, where the angel faces of Delia Bobbia 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

ART AND 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 washing 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, with 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-T
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 vulgar 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 bnitish, 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 " ail-but " modicum, — the
tenaciously impractical and unbusiness-like, the incor-
rigibly unconvinced as to the supreme importance of

1 Carlyle, Past and Present.

178 BULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS.

*• selling cotton cheaper." Else " vacuum and the serene
blue" would, indeed, <<be much handsomer" than this
our civilization. For the children of the "degraded
poor," and the degraded rich as well, in our 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
|t 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 want, 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,

ART AND LABOR. 179

of useful, wholesome, beneficent 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.

~-t

r

/

X.

THE SETTLEMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE

LABOR MOVEMENT.

THE SBTTIiBMBNT AS A FACTOR IN THB
LABOR MOVBMBNT.

JANE ADDAMS.

One 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 Bums'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 prtoosition which workingmen
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 }>ecame 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

188 [

184 HULL-HOUSE MAPS AND PAPERS,

settlement accepts the ethics 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 modem 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 who 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 discovery 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 FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT, 185

accepted proposition, but not a working formula. It
had not the 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 gradually 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 there 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.

No trades are so overcrowded as the sewing-trades;
for the needle has ever been the refuge of the unskilled
woman. The wages paid 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 money. 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 countrymen. 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-
eepted 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 wi^
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 LABOR MOVEMENT. 187

is not enough. She must supplement her 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 with the meagre equipment sufficient for
family life she has entered industrial life.N

Qlave 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 '?S 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 ?

rif 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

I

/

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 they, 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."

V^rades-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
idealAand to bring «in to 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 perhaps 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

i^ ^

A FACTOR IN THE LABOR 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 secure 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 two 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 command 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 FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 191

large, but it always 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 HULL-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 Russian, with a turn for eco-
nomic discussion, and widely read. He sees in the pres-
ent tendency towards 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 the 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 view we find
many shades of opinion and many modifications of phi-
losophy; but perhaps 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 against it.

A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 193

It has been said that the imagination in America has
been seized in due turn by the minister, the soldier, and
the lawyer, who have successively held the political ap-
pointments ; but that it is now the turn of the economist ;
that the man who would 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 difficulties as matters for prolonged discussion are
laid aside ? Is it not true that the interpretation of
the Constitution, and the 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, but his moral enterprise,
has to be tested by his attitude toward the 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, then
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, accept 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 HULL-UOUSE 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 LABOR MOVEMENT, 195

have already reached the higher development, but the
unions among the less intelligent and less skilled work-
men are still belligerent and organized on a military
basis, 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 doubtless true that a more uniform
leisure and a calmer temper of mind will 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 moral 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 want to lose sight of the
end in securing the means, 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 reared 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 opportunity, 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 irresistible 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 working-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 Toynb^e 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 the

A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT, 197

struggle between the masters and men during the in-
dustrial revolution. Two ideals in regard to the rela-
tionship between employer and employee 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 ti-ade 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 when 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 fidler 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, g^ant-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 now sometimes assumes that
higher wages will be spent only in the saloons. In hpth
cases there is a failure to count the sobering effect of
responsibility in the education and development which
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 reach 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 were 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 secretly
approved the action of his master, and said, <' I would
do the same if I were he."

A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 199

Workingmen say, sometimes, that the rich will not
hear the complaint of the poor 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 PAPEBS.

divide all men so sliarply 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 when 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, but 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 FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT 201

tors, and Bohemian and Polish butchers, struck in sym-
pathy with the cause of the American Railway Union,
whom they believed to be standing for a principle. Does
an event such as this, clumsy and unsatisfactory as itd
results are, prefigure the time when no factory child 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 homy, calloused hands,
And staring round for Grod 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-
tlement 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-
wards both.

A settlement may well be dismayed when it sees
workingmen apathetic to higher motives, and thinking
only of stratagems by which to outwit the capitalists ;
or when workingmen justify themselves in the use of

202 nuLL-nousE maps and papers,

base measures, saying they have 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 interests become the governing and mo-
tive power, and the settlement can logically be of no
value to either side. Its syinpathies 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 because 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 from 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 trades 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.

V

A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT 203

A recent writer has called attention to the fact that
the position of the power-holding 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
equipped ; 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 we can accept this explanation
of the social and political movements of our time, then
it is clear that the labor lAovement 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 one kind of
people or class of people, but for the common good.
The settlement believes that just as men deprived of
comradeship by circumstances or law go back to the bru-
tality from which they 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 moYement 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.
Any drop of gall within its cup is fatal. Any grudge
treasured up against a capitalist, any desire to ''get
even " when the wealth has changed hands, are but the
old experiences of human selfishness. All sense of
injury must fall away 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 op Hull-House.

LIST OP

RESIDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN IN RESIDENCE

FOR SIX MONTHS OR LONGER.

Jane Addams. ^
Ellen G. Stabr. ^
Julia C. Lathrop.
Florence Kellsy/
Mary A. Keyzeb.
Anna M. FARNSwoRXHr*
AoNEs Sinclair Holbroo^
Josephine Millioan, M.Dy^

WiLFREDA BROCKWAY.

Rose M. Gyles.
Gertrude Barnum.
Ella Rayhond Waite.

Annie Fryab.

JOSEFA HUMPAL ZeMAN.

Margaret M. West.
Jeannette C. Welch.1

•

Enella Benedict.
Clifford W. Barnes.^
Alex. A. Bbuce.^

EdWABD L. BUBCHABD.l

Henby B. Leabnbd.i
Chas. C. Abnold.i
John Addams Linn.
Edwin A. Waldo.

> Ko longer in rMidence.

The settlement, Jan. 1, 1896, nnmben twenty, indoding thoee who
residence now, bnt hare not yet resided for six months.

In

HULL-HOUSE :

A SOCIAL SBTTIiBMBNT.

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 much
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 group 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 Hull-House with a
conviction that social intercourse could best express
the 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

1 This outline was originaUy Issued as a pamphlet, Feb. 1, 1893. It is here
revised to Jan. 1, 1896.

207

\

V

208 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

might take. All the details were left for the demands
of the neighborhood to determine, and each department
has grown from a discovery made through 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 necessa-
I 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 would 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 shpps,
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.

i

APPENDIX. 209

The College Extension classes are so called because
I the instructors are mostly college men and women.

1 These classes were established at Hull-House before

the University Extension movement began in Chicago,
and are not connected with it. The faculty numbers
thirty-five, mostly college men and women, some of
whom have taught continuously for three years. No
^ • charge is made for the teaching, which is gratuitous
on the part of the faculty ; but the students j)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
I centre formed at Hull-House — two in the drawing-

I room and one in a neighboring church. The lecturers

were from the University Extension Department of the
University of Chicago.

SUMMER SCHOOL.

A helpful supplement of the College Extension Courses
has been the summer school held for three years in the
buildings of Rockford College, at Rockford, 111. Half
the students were able to attend. The sum of three
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'
asso(;iation formed at the close of the siuumer's term.

210 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

THE students' ASSOCIATION.

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
prograilime is followed by an informal dance in the
gymnasium. Each term's course is opened by a stu-
dents' reception given by the residents.

BEADIXG-ROOM.

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 deliver^'. This library has now
been moved to a neighboring block.

EXHIBITIONS OF PICTURES.

Owing partly to the limited s^tajce 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 public. 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

APPENDIX, 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 locality
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 strongly to the
belief that any compromise in the matter of excellence
in art was a mistake. They hung their own 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 good sets of pictures and
casts for several schools in the poorest localities. With
the means at her disposal she has been able to put 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.

working-people's chobus.

The same principles the House is striving to carry
into effect in regard to the music it provides.

212 HULL-BOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

The director of the World'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.

SyNDAY CONCERTS.

A free concert is given in the gymnasium every
Sunday afternoon. The concerts, at first given with
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.

SUNDAY CONCERTS, 5 P.M.

BEETHOVEN CONCERT . . Mrs. H. L. Fbakk.

(Beetlioven'8 Birthday.)

CHRLSTMAS MUSIC. —Songs and carols of Eleanor Smith

Relneke, Cornelius, and others.

Miss Eleanor Smith and the Senior Singing-Class.

MUSIC. —From Wagner's Opera of ** Lohengrin," with

interpretation . Mrs. James Hunt.

(In preparation for the mnslo Miss Starr will read
Tennyson's '* Holy Grail," at four o'clock.)

CONCERT. — Choral . . Led by Mr. W. L. Tomlins.
(Solos and choruses from ** Tlie Messiah '* and ** El^ah.**)

CONCERT. — Organ and String Quartette.

To be friven at the liouse of Mrs. .Tohn C. Coonley,
620 Division Street (and Lake Shore Drive), by

Mr. W. Middelschulte and the Spierino Quabtette.

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 compromised 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 with 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 JAKE 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, without 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. This
being given, together with a considerable esprit de corps
in the increasing number of members, the club has
thriven both substantially and socially. The weekly
dues of three dollars, with an occasional small assess-

214 HULL-HOUSE : A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

ment, 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 flat 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 within
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
i 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
wages 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 number of small and
feeble unions have, from the very fact of their weakness,
been 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 thei
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 in the annual report
of the Illinois State Factory Inspector, the first of which
has already 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-system.

V

216 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

A ward 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-HOUB 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 women
in factories and workshops to obey the eight-hour law.
This club has maintained its position, and done good
missionary work for the cause. They have developed
a strong sense of oUigation 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 working-people's SOCIAL SCIENCE CLUB

was formed during the first year of residence at Hull-
House, and has met weekly ever since, with 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 club 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

APPENDIX. 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. iVM. GliARKE.

"WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE."
Miss Susax B. Anthoxy.

{"THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF INDIA."

SWAMI VlYXHANANDE.

"THE UNEMPLOYED."
Dr. CHABIiES R. Hexdersoit.

"THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL."
Mr. Percy Aldex.

"THE NEW TRADES-UNIONISM."
Mr8. Robt. a. Wood.

" CHARITY ORGANIZATION."
Dr. Seth Low.

"THE NEIGHBORHOOD GUILD."
Dr. Staxtox Coit.

"THE CONSCIENCE OF THE STATE."
Dr. Bayard Holmes.

"THE CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL."
Mr. Wm. T. Stead.

T^

218 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT,

The programme for the fall of 1894 is possibly more

typical : —

" SOCEATES."
Pbof. Charles F. Bbadley, Northwestern UniTersity.

" EPICTETU8."
Dr. John Dewjey, University of Chicago.

"MARCUS AURELIUS."
Prof. J. H. Tufts, University of Chicago.

"ST. FRANCIS."
Miss Eliza Alleit Star.

" SAVONAROLA."
Rev. F. W. GujfSAULUS, D.D.

"SIR THOMAS MORE."
Mr. Charles Zeubliv, 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, esjiecially to secure greater
public control over natural monoix)lies. 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-

APPENDIX. 219

0U3 economic clubs meet for a common discussion. One
of the most successful was led by Father Huntington,
on the subject, " Can a Freethinker believe in Christ ? "
An audience of four hundred people followed closely
the two hours' discussion, which was closed by Mr.
Henry Greorge.

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-cleaning, 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 which 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 BULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

\

poor people of the neighborhood. The purchaser of
each 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 FEDERATION WARD COUNCIL.

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 Club are naturally working together imder
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 teardrinking 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-schoola
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 RECEPTION FOR GERMANS

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 encouragement.

During the first two years of Hull-House the resi-
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.

children's clubs.

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 SOCLiL 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 Roland 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 gj'mnasium together before they go home at five
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
week 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

SAYIKGS-BANK.

A branch of the New York Penny Provident Savings-
Bank has been sustained for two years. There are six
hundred depositors.

SEWIXG-SCHOOL.

One hundred and twenty Italian girls meet .every
Monday 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.

COOKING-GLASSES.

Three cooking-classes for adults 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 country or parks.
Excursions in small groups are more satisfactory than
the time-honored i)icnic method. Each summer from
fifty to a hundred children are sent from Hull-House

224 HULL-HOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

to the fresh-air homes and coantiy-houses. The resi-
dents were able, through the generosity of World's Fair
enthusiasts, to assist fifteen hundred children to see the
fair.

PLAYGBOUND.

During the last year 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 was
supplied from the city force, and a playground was
thrown open to the juvenile public. Through the sum-
mer evenings many parents bame 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 KINDERGARTEN 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.

t

APPENDIX. 225

in the attention paid to the matter of pictures and casts.
The Madonnas of Eaphael, in the best and largest pho-
tographs, are hung low, that the children may see them,
as well as casts from Donatello and Delia Eobbia. The
children talk in a familiar way to the babies on the wall,
and sometimes climb upon the chairs to kiss them.
Surely much is gained if one can begin in. a very little
jhild 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 JNew .
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 clubs.

-i 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
I of the building, is composed of one hundred and fifty of
\the abler citizens and more enterprising young men
\of the vicinity. Their constitution commits them, among \
Mother things, to the " cultivation of sobriety and good- !
fellowship." They are not without political influence in J
the ward, and are a distinct factor in its social life, as
all of their social undertakings have been remarkably

226 BULL-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 MANDOLIN 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.

4
S.

APPENDIX, 227

Henry Learned Club, Hull-House Glee Club, Jolly
Boys' Club, Good-Fellowship Club, Lexington Club, Bo-
hemian Garnet Club, Longfellow Club, Laurel Club,
Harrison Club, and others, are composed of young peo-
ple from fourteen to twenty-five years of age. Alumni
associations of the neighboring public schools hold their
meetings at the House. An effort 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, ancT 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 reasonable rate, with 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, with a Kew England
kitchen outfit, including a number of Aladdin ovens.
The foods are carefully prepared, and are sold by the
quart or pound to families for home consumption. Cof-
fee, soups, and st,ews are delivered every day at noon
to the neighboring factories. By means of an indurated
fibre can, it is possible 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 DELIVERY

\is daily growing in popularity. The kitchen during the
winter of 1893-1894 supplied hot lunches at ten cents

X

228 UULLr-IIOUSE: A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

leach to the two hundred women employed in the sewing-
jroom established by the Emergency Committee of the
I Chicago Women's Club. This room supplied work to
I 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
Xurses' Association has her headquarters, and receives
her orders, at the House.

A PUBLIC DiSPEXSARY

'was undertaken in 1893. It is open every day from
three u^til 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 on the Cook County staff, all the cases of desti-
tution within a certain radius of Hull-House being g^ven
to her for investigation. She 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 member of the State Board of

y