Social Welfare History Project Settlement Houses: How It All Began

Table Of Content

• Jane Addams Anti-War Views
• The Los Angeles Settlement House : dedicated to the Americanization of our alien population
• Watch a time lapse video of the Broad museum construction
• United States
• Replies to “Settlement Houses: An Introduction”
• A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement
• Citation styles

Neighborhood centers have taken  initiative in local programs and been part of every national  initiative to add to the hous­ing  supply. As industrialization, mass immigration, and expanded educational opportunities for women began to reshape the American city, the settlement house movement quickly swept across the United States. The first American settlement, The Neighborhood Guild, landed on New York’s Lower East Side in 1886—still operating today as the University Settlement.

Jane Addams Anti-War Views

The National Federation was drawn into this  planning process,  including conducting a study funded by the  President’s  Commission on Urban  Problems.7  Before these  initiatives could  bear fruit, the  political climate changed and  federal interest  waned. For the first time, many moved out of their family homes to live on their own and gained access to a wide range of professional development opportunities. Not only did the settlement house provide hands-on training in social work, social science research, education, public policy, nursing, and medicine, it was also a space in which these women were actively defining the work and standards of these modern professions. Settlement workers tried to improve housing conditions, organized protests, offered job-training and labor searches, supported organized labor, worked against child labor, and fought against corrupt politicians. They provided classes in art and music and offered lectures on topics of interest.

The Los Angeles Settlement House : dedicated to the Americanization of our alien population

They established playgrounds, day care, kindergartens, and classes in English literacy. Settlement workers were also heavily involved in research to identify the factors causing need and in activities intended to eliminate the factors that caused the need. Scholarships for ambitious children were part of settlement offerings from early days to the present.

Watch a time lapse video of the Broad museum construction

Although the most famous settlement house workers were middle- and upper-class white women, African-American women also participated in the movement throughout the United States. They focused on issues similar to those of white women, but had to cope with the additional problems of racism, segregation, disfranchisement, and discrimination facing black communities in general. They worked tirelessly to educate other African-Americans about sanitation and health issues and to improve neighborhoods by pressing for garbage pickup and better city services like sewers and lighting. Although settlement houses have often been characterized as largely secular in nature, many of them grew from religious roots.

Three-fourths of settlement workers in America were women; most were well educated and dedicated to working on problems of urban poverty. These included Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, prominent figures in the U.S. Children's Bureau; Florence Kelley, labor and consumer advocate; Alice Hamilton, physician and social activist; and Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, social researchers and key leaders in the development of social work education. In addition to these women, Mary O'Sullivan, a labor leader and reformer, organized the Chicago Women's Bindery Workers' Union in 1889. In 1892, she became the American Federation of Labor's first woman organizer. Additionally, Lucy Flower helped found the Illinois Training School for Nurses, the Chicago Bureau of Charities, the Cook County Juvenile Court, the Protective Agency for Women and Children, and the Lake Geneva Fresh Air Association for poor urban children.

United States

Reform  movements have proliferated and  have become specializations in themselves, relying on coali­tions and  mass  communication. Neighborhood centers will still be commit­ted to change, still bear evidence of wrongs to be righted–but they  will be part of coordinated efforts along with others. Addams and other Hull-House residents sponsored legislation to abolish child labor, establish juvenile courts, limit the hours of working women, recognize labor unions, make school attendance compulsory and ensure safe working conditions in factories. The Progressive party adopted many of these reforms as part of its platform in 1912. At the party’s national convention, Addams seconded the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for president and campaigned actively on his behalf. She advocated for women’s suffrage because she believed that women’s votes would provide the margin necessary to pass social legislation she favored.

Progressives Should Read Progressive History—So They Don't Blow It This Time - POLITICO

Progressives Should Read Progressive History—So They Don't Blow It This Time.

Posted: Sat, 01 Jun 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Replies to “Settlement Houses: An Introduction”

Christodora House: A leader in the settlement house movement - Village Preservation

Christodora House: A leader in the settlement house movement.

Posted: Mon, 23 Jan 2017 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Participants in  movement for  compulsory insurance to meet cost of sickness ( ). Barnett  (interna­tional exchange) Fellow Dr. Douglas Orr studied British system (1938). Na­tional  study of family health and medical  practices directed by Helen Hall, “When Sickness Strikes.”  Both studies important base  for  national legislative testimony. White Rose Mission was operated and funded by Black volunteers and philanthropists, and Matthews was a leading figure in the movement for racial uplift promoted most famously by Booker T. Washington.

A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement

In her autobiography, 20 Years at Hull-House (1910), she argued that society should both respect the values and traditions of immigrants and help the newcomers adjust to American institutions. A new social ethic was needed, she said, to stem social conflict and address the problems of urban life and industrial capitalism. Although tolerant of other ideas and social philosophies, Addams believed in Christian morality and the virtue of learning by doing.

Pasadena Mayan Dancers and Karamu Dancers at Washington and at New York World Fair ( ). Settlement houses depended on volunteers not only to staff and operate them but for funding. Reformers used newspapers and clergy to spread the word about the houses and explain the movement's mission to the public. The women activists formed relationships with business and civic leaders and then approached them for assistance in the form of either money or time and skills.

Worked for establishment of city and state  housing commissions (1918). For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Part of a new generation of college-educated, independent women that historians have called “New Women,” she sought to put her education to greater use. Although her religiosity waned under the heavy Christianity of Rockford, her commitment to the greater good increased. For the next six years, she attempted to study medicine, but her own poor health derailed her. Addams found her true calling while in London with her friend Ellen Gates Starr in 1888.

Therefore, these things must be changed if we would have a  reasonable  hope of survival of the human race, including ourselves. Many of our most sacred institutions are going to have to be changed  very extensively, given far wider responsibilities, made competent to do things that up until now they were not able to do-such as how to learn to live in  peace on a  world basis. •  Helping youth  in special  difficulty,  through programs to help  substance abusers, those  involved in street-gangs, and  in other  delinquent activities. • Protecting against  unemployment,  through  support  for   adequate workmens’ compensation, retraining, and  Full Employment programs. Offered relief, work relief, soup kit­chens, advocated  public works (1892).

Many women who were clients or staff members at settlement houses gained a political education there and went on to participate in the labor movement, civic-reform organizations, and national party politics. Cleveland, along with Chicago, Boston, and New York, was one of the centers of the U.S. settlement-house movement. Local settlement work began in the late 1890s, and within a decade a half-dozen settlements operated in Cleveland neighborhoods. Several of the city's settlement houses achieved national recognition; for example, KARAMU HOUSE, one of the centers of African-American theater in the U.S., and the CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, with its model music training programs.

He came to know his neighbors, offered classes for children, and worked to improve housing and sanitation conditions in the area. Two years later, in poor health, Denison had to abandon the project, and he died in 1870. In the United States, even more than in England, the late 19th century was an era of profound economic, cultural, and demographic change. Americans from rural areas were flowing into the cities along with a growing stream of immigrants from abroad. And as in England, individual artisans were losing economic ground to the factory system, which reduced the demand for manual labor; the average worker was experiencing a decline in real income, as well as chronic unemployment. Economic pressures on the poor were giving rise to child labor; public welfare was non-existent, and cooperative and mutual aid societies, forerunners of the labor movement, were still in their infancy.