Kira Canny
Houses Where the Heart Is: Jane Addams, Dorothy Day and the Movements to Humanize American Thought Towards Poverty

“Civilization is a method of living and an attitude of equal respect for all people.” --Jane Addams

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” --Dorothy Day

People wander in and out all day. Some are erratic, displeased and anxious. They are frustrated with the treatment they receive from most people they encounter. Others calmly request information or help, nap quietly on the couch, or tell jokes to those of us on staff. We are the rare ones that look them in the eye. We are the ones who listen to their stories. We are often the only ones who treat them with the respect they deserve as human beings. Every day as I work with homeless people in Thurston county as a volunteer with Bread and Roses Catholic Worker organization, I realize that I am but one in a long history of workers dedicated to empowering the poor and providing hospitality to the homeless. Though the Settlement House and Catholic Worker movements have differed in religious affiliations and philosophies, the two have been united in their work to humanize and acknowledge those marginalized in society, whether they be immigrants at the turn of the century over 100 year ago, or homeless persons in contemporary times.

The United States settlement movement dates back to 1886, when Stanton Coit, a leader of the Society for Ethical Culture, brought the idea from England and founded Neighborhood Guild (later the University Settlement) in New York City. Settlements were founded with the main purpose of bringing about social change. The idea was innovative: that by living among the poor, educated upper-class settlement residents could gain new insights into poverty and establish a different kind of relationship with those they were trying to help – that of a neighbor. Early settlement workers sought to help their neighbors on two levels: first, by providing immediate services to those in need, and second by working to reform the physical and social environment of the slum and the larger society.

Settlement workers became involved with political reform on the municipal and ward level. During the early days of the settlement movement, immigrants were crowding into major cities, and labor unions were trying violently to wrest recognition from inflexible employers. The pioneers of the movement responded to the needs of immigrants and attempted to bridge the gap between rich and poor, laborer and employer. They resolved to improve poor sanitation in the slums and deal with the pressing issue of garbage removal. Settlement workers and many Progressives believed that the environment, especially the urban environment, was the key to solving social problems, an adopted Marxist philosophy. In the 1890’s the number of settlements rose from three to nearly one hundred, with houses in New York, Chicago, Boston, and even most small cities.

Two Examples of New York City slums around the turn of the century.

Displaying the progressive belief in the cleansing power of sunlight, the leaders of the movement believed that if they publicized the horrible conditions of the slums, society would respond by uniting against poverty. However, they also knew that more than publicity was needed. They offered the middle and upper classes a chance to live in the slums of the cities, to observe the environment first hand, and to become pragmatic experimenters in search of solutions. They spearheaded advances such as kindergartens, and persuaded the public schools to follow their example and incorporate new elements of progressive education to the curriculum.

Settlements led in establishing Americanization programs, with the idea that “if immigrants had language and citizenship classes, maybe they would abandon the ward boss.” (Trolander 15) They also organized regulations of working conditions for women and children and encouraged labor to unionize. Settlement workers attacked poverty through advocacy for labor legislation, public welfare, better housing, playgrounds, improved education, and democratic reform. The improvements that the settlement movement took up became an integral part of the Progressive Era, a period characterized by reform on many fronts. Many of these reforms were vital to the settlement worker’s platform, including; attacks on big business and machine politicians, experiments in education, housing programs for the poor, the establishment of new government agencies and programs, campaigns to safeguard labor, feminism, and prohibition.
Most settlement workers publicly endorsed the concept of labor organization, and the labor movement received some badly needed support from the leading settlements in the United States. However, this stance sometimes got them in trouble. Both Hull House and the University of Chicago settlements lost donations because of their pro-union stance.

Two major organizations came out of the Progressive Era devoted to the cause of the woman worker. The National Consumer’s League was founded in 1899. Under the direction of Florence Kelly, the League campaigned to improve working conditions for women and children. The Women’s Trade Union League also formed with settlement help and the first branches were located in New York City, Boston, and Chicago settlements. Workers were able to furnish reformers with the data they needed to attack urban problems. They also furthered the cause of municipal reform through their own surveys and attempts to publicize the bad conditions in the slums. Most settlement houses were in sympathy with municipal political reform.

The number of reform organizations begun in the Progressive Era with settlement help is astounded. A partial list – The Consumer’s League, The Women’s Trade Union League, The National Housing Association, and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Every one of these had strong connections to the settlement houses. The settlements were truly at the heart of Progressive Era reform.

One of the leading settlement houses of the time was Hull House in Chicago. Founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1891, Hull House applied “Protestant values and democratic principles to the harsh conditions of urban-industrial society.” (Dawley 16)

Addams envisioned a place where middle and upper class women could live and work together with lower class women to tackle issues of social reform. The goal was to make Hull House a center for education, art, philanthropic work, and a general gathering place for people seeking reform due to the rapid industrialization of the period. The spectrum of services provided by Hull House in its prime are astonishing. They included a kindergarten, day care for the children of working women, an art gallery, reading room, social clubs, art studio, public bakery, the first public gymnasium in Chicago, a labor museum dedicated to preserving the arts and crafts of different cultures and ethnicities, and classes offered in domestic sciences such as cooking and sewing, Hull House was a woman-centered institution. It gave women a wide range of opportunities to gain experience in public life. Putting feminist thinking to work, Hull House pioneered the socialization of functions previously entrusted entirely to the family. Its residents included such women social scientists as Florence Kelley and Dr. Alice Hamilton, who documented the dangerous working conditions, unhealthy living conditions, child labor exploitation, and other problems of Chicago. Florence Kelley later became Chief Factory Inspector for Illinois as a result of her work exposing the health hazards of laborers in factories.

Hull House Complex 1905-1910

Women settlement workers at Hull House each contributed something different and important to the community. Dr. Rachelle Yarros established clinics throughout Chicago to treat venereal disease and offer women information about birth control. Mary Kenney was important in organizing women workers into unions. Dr. Alice Hamilton investigated the causes of a Typhoid epidemic in 1902, and worked on public health issues such as poor sanitation and garbage removal. Ellen Gates Starr became very instrumental in the labor movement and helped to organize striking garment workers in 1896, 1910, and 1915. In 1912, President Taft appointed Julia Lathrop as the first head of the newly created Children’s Bureau. Over the next nine years, Lathrop directed research into child labor, infant mortality, maternal mortality, juvenile delinquency, mothers’ pensions and illegitimacy. Louise de Koven Bowen was instrumental in creating a separate juvenile court and Chicago’s Juvenile Protection Association, and she helped found the Woman’s City Club, which brought women together in one center organization to work for the welfare of the city. She was serving as president of the Chicago Equal Suffrage Association when the Illinois legislature gave women of the state the vote in local and federal elections. Sophonisba Breckinridge played a leading role in the development of the Immigrants’ Protection League, The Women’s Trade Union League, and the Children’s Bureau. Breckinridge also helped to establish the NAACP in 1909. Aside from these women, almost every woman at Hull House campaigned tirelessly for women’s suffrage. This is only a partial list of the amazing female social reformers at Hull House.

Jane Addams became deeply involved in wider efforts for social reform, including housing and sanitation issues, factory inspection, rights of immigrants, women and children, pacifism, and the eight hour work day. She served as a Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1911- 1914. In 1912, she campaigned for the Progressive Party and its presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. She worked with the Peace Party, helped found and served as president (1919-1935) of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). During World War I, Addams’ spoke out adamantly against the war and was a strong proponent of pacifism. She said, “Peace is not just the absence of war, but the worldwide nurture of human life and values.” (The Women of Hull House) In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When the died on May 21, 1935, thousands came to Hull House to pay tribute to the woman who had dedicated her entire life to issues of social justice and had changed so much.

Jane Addams 1896

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, radically different from the Settlement House movement, but similarly dedicated to issues of social justice. A devout Catholic, Day saw the Church as "the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor." (Forest 2) On May 1, 1933, Day put out the first issue of The Catholic Worker, a newspaper to publicize Catholic social teaching and promote steps to bring about the peaceful transformation of society. By December, 100,000 copies were being printed each month. The paper expressed dissatisfaction with the social order and took the side of labor unions, but its vision of the ideal future challenged both urbanization and industrialization. It wasn't only radical, but spiritual. The paper didn't merely complain, but called on its readers to make personal responses.

For the first six months The Catholic Worker was only a newspaper, but as winter approached, homeless people began to knock on the door. By the end of that first winter, an apartment was rented with space for ten women. Soon after, a place for men was also rented. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. It continued to grow and in 1936 the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no extension could possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, Day wrote, "grey men, the color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the rising sap of faith." (Day 58) In contrast with most charitable organizations, settlement houses included, no one at the Catholic worker set about reforming the guests. The idea of hospitality saturated every aspect of the services offered. By 1936 there were thirty-three hospitality houses spread across the country. The Catholic Worker had become a national movement.

The Catholic Worker attitude towards those who were welcomed wasn't always appreciated. These weren't the "deserving poor", but often drunks and "good-for-nothings". A visiting social worker asked Day how long the "clients" were permitted to stay. "We let them stay forever", Day answered. "They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. Once they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they always were members of the family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ." (Forest 6) Day was a pacifist, like Addams, and believed wholly in a nonviolent way of life. She rallied publicly against General Francisco Franco, leader of the fascist side in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Franco presented his side as a defender of the Catholic faith and nearly every Catholic bishop and publication supported him. The Catholic Worker refused to support either side in the war and lost two-thirds of its readers. Day expressed anxiety for the Jews in Nazi Germany and later was among the founders of the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism.

Beginning in the 1950's, the New York Catholic Worker community began to publicly refuse to participate in the state's annual civil defense drill. Such preparation for attack seemed to Day, part of an attempt to promote nuclear war as survivable and winnable and to justify spending billions on the military. When the sirens sounded on June 15,1955, Day was among a small group of people sitting in front of City Hall. "In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in God if we depend upon the Atom bomb," a Catholic Worker leaflet explained. Day described her civil disobedience as an act of apology for America's use of nuclear bombs in Japan. (Forest 6) Day continued to be an activist in various social movements, including the struggle for civil rights during the 1950's and 1960's. She again spoke out against war, this time on Ameica's involvement in Vietnam. Day was last arrested and jailed in 1973 after taking part in a banned picket line in support of farm workers with Cesar Chavez. She was 75.


Dorothy Day 1968

Dorothy Day died on November 29,1980. She had been regarded by many, even before her death, as a saint, to which she responded, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily." (Forest 8) Her work continues to this day with Catholic Worker organizations across the country, including Bread and Roses in Olympia, Washington. John Cogley, a writer for the Catholic Worker, writes beautifully on the principles of the Catholic Worker movement in his essay House of Hospitality.

"How they got that way, what happened, why: there are a thousand different stories. It would be nice maybe if the eager people who want general answers to these questions could be satisfied; but you just can't answer a silly question like: How do men get that way? Or.- What would you say is the cause of their present condition?

"If you could answer, a flat 'booze' (which is much more often an effect than it is a cause) or 'laziness' or 'bad home life' or 'an unhappy marriage' or something resounding and satisfying, then the people who demand an easy explanation might be happy. But you can’t account for a thousand human tragedies with a single phrase.

“The point is that they were men. What was the cause, what happened, how do you explain, isn’t it their own fault, don’t you think if they had to do this or that or the other thing, etc. – all these things are beautifully besides the point.

“When life is dripping away from men, it is not the time for speculation or self-satisfying theory-applications. This is the time to stop the flow, to heal the wounds, to bathe the sores.”

Bread and Roses of Olympia provides food, shelter, and dignity to the poor and homeless in Olympia and the surrounding Thurston County. They strive to live by the Catholic Worker philosophy of hospitality, nonviolence, and social justice.

Settlement Houses have changed, but they do still exist, though not in the same capacity they once did. Many no longer continue the primary orientation toward immigrants, although others serve newer immigrant populations from Asia and Latin America. Some of the services offered by the settlement houses of the past are offered today, though in altered form, including adult education, Americanization classes, job clubs, after-school recreation, and trade and vocational training, to name a few. It is estimated by the National Association of Social Workers, that in 1998 in the United States there were more than 900 settlement houses in operation. (Trainin-Blank 3) There is also an International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, which was organized in 1926 and has a membership of more than 4500 settlement houses and neighborhood centers around the world.

Settlement houses are essentially community and neighborhood centers today, each working basically alone to serve an individual community. They are still involved in advocacy work and many operate entirely with the homeless, elderly, and mentally ill. Today settlement houses are more professionalized and more institutionalized than their predecessors, although the idea of neighborhood access hasn't changed. "They're still organized to be able to do whatever it takes to bring the community together and to improve life," says John Ramey, general secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work With Groups, which includes many settlement workers. (Trainin-Blank 7) Settlement houses have changed with the community and hopefully will continue to grow in ways that serve the individual and the community.

For as long as there have been and will be "social problems" and issues of social justice, there have been and will continue to be those interested in reform and change. It is unfortunate that this work needs to continue in a country full of such wealth and presumed opportunity. I do not believe that there is any easy answer as to why homelessness and poverty are still so prevalent in American society. Perhaps we are still “catching up" with the rapid industrialization and growth that caused the necessary inception of settlement houses over one hundred years ago. Or maybe Americans have become more individualistic and care less about what benefits the communal and more about what benefits the individual. There are innumerable possibilities and each one is disheartening, but it is comforting to know that not all have ceased to care. Women have had a long history of enacting social change and through the work of amazing individuals like Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, and countless others, American activism and social reform has made countless advancements. Of course, things are far from perfect, and today's settlement houses, governmental programs like Americorps and Jobcore which use settlement movement philosophies, and organizations like Bread and Roses continue to fight for fairness, dignity, and respect for all members of a community.