About the Work
Philanthropy and Social Progress: Seven Essays is a collection of lectures delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Massachusetts, during its summer session of 1892. The volume was edited with an introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams and includes contributions from five authors: Miss Jane Addams, Robert A. Woods, Father James O. S. Huntington, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, and Bernard Bosanquet. The book was copyrighted in 1893 by T. Y. Crowell & Co.
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The work is structured as a series of seven essays addressing various aspects of philanthropy, social reform, and the emerging Settlement movement in the United States and England. The table of contents lists the following contributions: an introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams; “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” by Jane Addams; “The Objective Value of a Social Settlement” by Jane Addams; “The University Settlement Idea” by Robert A. Woods; “Philanthropy—Its Success and Failure” by Father James O. S. Huntington; “Philanthropy and Morality” by Father James O. S. Huntington; “The Ethics of Social Progress” by Professor Franklin H. Giddings; and “The Principles and Chief Dangers of the Administration of Charity” by Bernard Bosanquet.
The essays were delivered within the Economics department of the School of Applied Ethics, which also maintained departments of Comparative Religion and the Science of Ethics. The lectures represent a collaborative effort by practical philanthropists and academics to address the pressing social questions of the late nineteenth century, particularly the growing divide between social classes in industrial cities and the moral obligations of educated and wealthy citizens toward the poor.
Context
The book emerges from a specific historical moment in the late nineteenth century when American and English cities were experiencing rapid industrialization, mass immigration, and the visible breakdown of traditional community structures. Professor Henry C. Adams, in his introduction, observes that the most significant changes of the nineteenth century were industrial in nature, and consequently the most pressing questions of right and wrong found their root in industrial relationships. He argues that it is not enough to urge right conduct upon business leaders; rather, legal and social conditions must be created so that one following a high ideal of justice can hope for business success.
The School of Applied Ethics, where these lectures were delivered, organized its 1892 session around the theme of social progress. The curriculum traced changes in economic theory since John Stuart Mill, studied the theory of social progress, considered the function of law, covered philanthropy, presented statistical analyses of industrial problems, and examined labor and monopoly issues. Adams notes that all contributors except Professor Giddings were practical philanthropists actively engaged in social work.
The context of the Settlement movement is central to the book. Jane Addams is identified as the guiding spirit of Hull House in Chicago, described as the most influential Settlement in the country. Robert A. Woods, a recent Amherst graduate, was connected with Andover House in Boston. Father Huntington of the Order of the Holy Cross contributed chapters on philanthropy’s success and failure and on philanthropy and morality. Bernard Bosanquet, active in the Charity Organization of London, brought the English experience of organized charity to the collection.
Adams characterizes the lectures’ chief feature as democratic sentiment—not democracy as a form of government but as a social ideal, purpose, and feeling. He observes that specialization has increased interdependence and that society is becoming organic. The book thus reflects a transitional period in American social thought, when the older model of neighborly charity was giving way to organized philanthropy, and when the Settlement movement was emerging as a new form of social engagement for educated young people.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized as a collection of seven essays preceded by an introduction. The introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams sets the intellectual framework for the lectures, explaining the structure of the School of Applied Ethics and the rationale for focusing on industrial relationships as the root of contemporary moral questions.
The first two essays are by Jane Addams and concern the Settlement movement. “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” examines the motives that impel educated young people to establish Settlements in poor urban neighborhoods. Addams divides these motives into three lines: the desire to extend democracy beyond political expression into social affairs; the impulse to share the race life and bring civilization’s accumulation to those who have little; and a renaissance of Christianity toward its early humanitarian aspects. The essay draws on the experience of Hull House, which was established in September 1889 as Chicago’s first Settlement.
“The Objective Value of a Social Settlement” describes the practical operations of Hull House and the conditions of its neighborhood. Addams details the political and civic conditions of the ward, including the influence of saloon-keepers as aldermen, inadequate public services, and the influx of immigrant populations. She describes the demographic changes brought by the sweating system, the poor housing conditions, and the various activities of Hull House: University Extension courses, art exhibitions, classes in drawing and clay modelling, lectures, cooking and sewing classes, boys’ and girls’ clubs, a kindergarten, and the House’s function as an information and interpretation bureau for newly arrived immigrants.
The third essay, “The University Settlement Idea” by Robert A. Woods, presents a comprehensive vision for the Settlement movement. Woods compares the current social movement to the end of the Middle Ages, when the Crusades gave men a new view of the world and a moral impulse united classes. He argues that the new bond of society is the social organism, and that Settlements are essential for uniting the social body so that vital influence runs to every extremity. The essay covers the practical operations of Settlements, including the need for residents to study their neighborhoods scientifically, cooperate with local organizations and religious forces, and work toward municipal reform. Woods also addresses the internal governance of Settlements, the qualifications of residents, and the future expansion of the movement.
The fourth and fifth essays are by Father James O. S. Huntington. “Philanthropy—Its Success and Failure” traces the history of American philanthropy from the colonial period through the late nineteenth century. Huntington describes the early “rudimentary and inchoate” philanthropy of the New England colonies, the breakdown of social homogeneity in the 1830s and 1840s, the rise of organized charitable societies, and the development of the Charity Organization Society movement. He also discusses the evolution of philanthropy from merely providing physical necessities to recognizing the full range of human faculties, including social intercourse, intellectual pleasure, and artistic delight. “Philanthropy and Morality” continues this examination, presumably addressing the moral dimensions of charitable work.
The sixth essay, “The Ethics of Social Progress” by Professor Franklin H. Giddings, presents a theoretical framework for understanding social evolution and the ethical principles that should guide it. The seventh essay, “The Principles and Chief Dangers of the Administration of Charity” by Bernard Bosanquet, draws on the experience of the Charity Organization of London to examine the practical administration of charitable relief and the dangers inherent in poorly managed charity.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The Book’s Front Matter and Introduction
The volume opens with the standard digitization notice of a library copy, explaining that the book has entered the public domain and that the original’s marginalia and notations are preserved in the scan. The title page identifies the work as Philanthropy and Social Progress: Seven Essays, a collection by Miss Jane Addams, Robert A. Woods, Father J. O. S. Huntington, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, and Bernard Bosanquet. These essays were originally delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Massachusetts, during its 1892 session, with an introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams. The table of contents lists the seven contributions, beginning with Addams’s two essays on the subjective and objective necessity for social settlements, followed by Woods on the university settlement idea, Huntington on philanthropy’s success and failure and its relation to morality, Giddings on the ethics of social progress, and Bosanquet on the administration of charity.
In his introduction, Professor Adams explains that the lectures were given in the school’s Economics department, which in that session centered all its studies on social progress. He argues that because the nineteenth century’s most significant changes were industrial, the era’s most pressing moral questions were rooted in industrial relationships. It was insufficient to urge right conduct upon business leaders; rather, legal and social conditions had to be created so that one following a high ideal of justice could hope for business success. The economist, therefore, had to re-examine fundamental principles to discover what form of business organization would call into exercise the moral force dormant since the time of the old guilds and canon law. Adams notes that all contributors except Professor Giddings were practical philanthropists, and he identifies Miss Addams as the guiding spirit of Hull House in Chicago, the most influential Settlement in the country. He characterizes the lectures’ chief feature as democratic sentiment—not democracy as a form of government but as a social ideal, purpose, and feeling, noting that specialization had increased interdependence and society was becoming organic.
The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements: First Motives
Jane Addams opens her first essay by stating that Hull House, Chicago’s first Settlement, was established in September 1889 by two women backed by friends. It was situated amid large foreign colonies that isolate themselves in American cities, and it endeavored to make social intercourse express the growing sense of economic unity of society, adding the social function to democracy. The paper treats the subjective necessity for Social Settlements, analyzing motives based on conviction and genuine emotion, which she divides into three lines: first, the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, extending democracy beyond political expression; second, the impulse to share the race life and bring civilization’s accumulation to those who have little; and third, a renaissance of Christianity toward its early humanitarian aspects.
She argues that America’s view of democracy has been partial, with its best achievement along the franchise line. Democracy has made little attempt to assert itself in social affairs. We followed the ballot with freedom for the negro but are unmoved that he lives in practical social ostracism. We give the franchise to immigrants from tradition while deriding their past lives and feeling no duty to invite them to our houses. She compares the politician who sells offices to the highest bidder with the woman who invites only those who bring equal social return, calling both unmindful of the common weal. “Bossism” in politics arouses scandal, yet similar practices continue in society and are only beginning to be challenged. Consciences are becoming “tender” regarding the lack of democracy in social affairs, and we may be entering “the second phase of democracy.”
The Breakdown of the Social Organism
The social organism has broken down through large districts of great cities. Many residents are very poor, lacking leisure or energy beyond subsistence. They move frequently between wretched lodgings, live side by side without knowing each other, without fellowship, local tradition, public spirit, or social organization. Those who could help—people with social tact, training, large houses, and traditions of hospitality—live elsewhere, while club-houses, libraries, and galleries are blocks away. Working-men are organized into “armies of producers” because men of executive ability found it in their interests to organize them, but they are not organized socially. Though living in crowded tenement-houses, they lack corresponding social contact, and their only meeting place is often a saloon, their only host a bartender.
The author personally believes those who stay away lose most. The paradox is that when cultivated people persistently withhold social advantages, the resulting condition is used as an argument for continued withholding. It is said the masses don’t want social advantages, that they are heavy and dull. This divides the city into rich and poor—the favored expressing obligation through money gifts, the unfavored clamoring for a “share.” This division would be more justifiable if the isolated people added enough to social progress to justify withholding, but they cannot. “The social spirit discharges itself in many forms, and no one form is adequate to its total expression.” All are uncomfortable about the sincerity of their phrases because they hesitate to translate philosophy into deed.
Young Educated People and Educational Extension
Those feeling this insincerity most keenly are young, educated people who accomplish little toward solving the social problem. They are “cultivated into unnourished, over-sensitive lives,” shut off from common labor, feeling a fatal want of harmony between theory and life. Their hopes are formulated: in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses; a higher civic life can only be fostered through common intercourse; blessings of refinement must be made universal to be permanent; good secured for oneself is precarious until secured for all. Educational matters are more democratic politically than socially. Public schools in poor wards are inadequate, and after age twelve, many children never encounter a professional teacher or cultivated friend. The University Extension movement, especially with Settlements, would take learning to tailors of East London and dock-laborers of the Thames. Best work occurs in Settlements where teaching is socialized—the teacher grapples students not only by lectures but by every hook to intellectual life, diffusing learning in a social atmosphere, “information held in solution.”
Education as Froebel defined it is “deliverance” of body and mind forces. A pitiful period occurs when the young American attempting to rise feels locked up and rigid, shut off from his uneducated family. Mazzini said education is not merely a necessity of true life but “a Holy Communion with generations dead and living.” When withheld for generations, as with the Italian peasant, people say “He is like a beast of the field,” using the effect as argument for continuing the cause. A Settlement protests against restricted views of education.
Sharing the Race Life and the Christian Renaissance
The second line of motives is “a great desire to share the race life.” We bear traces of the starvation struggle that made up the life of the race; our organism holds memories of ancestors’ long life. Nothing deadens sympathies like keeping away from opportunities for helpfulness and ignoring the starvation struggle of half the race. To shut oneself away is to live out but half the humanity we inherit. Many young people are buried beneath mere mental accumulation, with lowered vitality and discontent. Walter Besant says they have had the vision that Peter had when he saw the great sheet let down from heaven, wherein was neither clean nor unclean—the sense of humanity, something fuller and wider than philanthropy. Mr. Barnett, who urged the first Settlement, Toynbee Hall, in East London, recognized this need of outlet for the young men of Oxford and Cambridge.
The Butler Gallery and the Expanding Work of Hull House
During the last winter, Hull House served as a successful centre for two University Extension courses in connection with the University of Chicago, a natural extension of its policy to co-operate as much as possible with public institutions. This co-operation was most visibly realized with the Chicago Public Library, which had an almost unique system of branch reading-rooms and delivery stations throughout the city. Hull House was made one of these delivery stations during its second year, and when the Butler Gallery was completed in June, 1891, the lower floor was offered free of rent as a branch reading-room. The City Library supplied English magazines and papers, along with two librarians, and the room also carried papers in Italian, German, Bohemian, and French. The number of readers grew from 1,213 in the first month to 2,454 by the fifth.
The upper floor of the Butler Gallery was divided into an art exhibition room and a studio. The first art exhibit was opened in June, 1891, by Mr. and Mrs. Barnett of St. Jude’s, Whitechapel, whose hearty sympathy was associated with that first display. The pictures were some of the best Chicago could afford, including works by Corot, Watts, and Davis, with European country scenes, sea views, and Dutch interiors bringing forth pleasant reminiscences. Five exhibits followed: two of oil-paintings, one of old engravings and etchings, one of water-colors, and one of pictures selected for use in the public schools. The average attendance at these exhibits was three thousand, with each exhibit open from two in the afternoon until ten in the evening for about two weeks. The value of these exhibits to the neighborhood was determined by the value one attaches to the sense of beauty and the pleasure arising from its contemplation. Classes in free-hand drawing and clay modelling were held in the studio and were very popular from the first.
Every Thursday evening for three years, save during the summer months, a lecture of some sort was held at Hull House, becoming an expected event in the neighborhood. These lectures were largely attended by the College Extension students, and topics were supposed to connect with their studies, though many other people came and often joined a class because of an interest a lecturer had awakened. For two years, a summer school was held at Rockford, Illinois, in connection with the College Extension classes, with from one-third to one-half of the students able to attend, paying their board for a month and enjoying out-door study. The author recommended for imitation the generous action of the Rockford College trustees in placing at disposal, free of rent, their entire educational apparatus.
On the borderland between social and educational activity were the Sunday afternoon concerts and the Plato Club which followed them. The industrial education of Hull House was somewhat limited, but from the beginning there were large and enthusiastic cooking classes, first in the Hull House kitchen and later in a tiny cottage across the yard, along with sewing, mending, and embroidery classes. Three hundred children met weekly at Hull House on three days, not counting those who came merely as depositors in the Penny Provident Fund Savings Bank. A hundred Italian girls came on Monday to sew and carry home a new garment, which became a pattern for the entire family. Tuesday afternoon was devoted to school-boys’ clubs, practically story-telling clubs, with legends and tales of chivalry being the most popular. The one hundred and fifty little girls on Friday afternoon were not very unlike the boys, though they wanted to sew while hearing their stories. The value of these clubs lay almost entirely in their success in arousing the higher imagination. A kindergarten had been held at Hull House ever since the residents lived there, with miniature Italians, Hebrews, French, Irish, and Germans assembling every morning in the drawing-room; nothing excited admiration in the neighborhood so much as the fact that the residents “put up with them.”
Beyond the neighbors who responded to receptions and classes were those too battered and oppressed to care for them, who claimed humanitarian efforts through their susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity. Perhaps the chief value of a Settlement to its neighborhood, certainly to the newly arrived foreigner, was its office as an information and interpretation bureau, acting as a commission merchant between the various institutions of the city and the people for whose benefit they were erected. Hospitals, county agencies, and State asylums were often but vague rumors to the people who needed them most. This commission work was of value not only to the recipient but to the institutions themselves, which were apt to lace themselves up in formulas and forget the mystery and complexity of life. The residents of a Social Settlement had the opportunity of seeing institutions from the recipient’s standpoint, catching the spirit of the original impulse which founded them.
The Limits of Class Theory and the Meaning of Philanthropy
Addams argued that social-science clubs were more educational than single-issue groups because they allowed different schools of thought to modify each other, teaching tolerance and the futility of trying to convince everyone of one position. She recounted an event from the previous spring when the Hull House Social Science Club heard talks from department heads on municipal and county affairs. After an address on “The Chicago Police,” a working-man told the chief of police that he had been arrested, fined two dollars and a half, and lost three days’ work for coming out of the wrong gate at the World’s Fair grounds. The chief sighed, expressed regret, and made no defense. The speaker sat down bewildered, realizing for the first time that blunders hurt the perpetrator as well as the victim. Addams asked whether capitalists and working-men could meet as individuals under a friendly roof and have their “class theories” modified by personal acquaintance; based on her experience, she said no.
She clarified that most teaching and formal club work at Hull House was done by people living outside the House, with between ninety and one hundred such people meeting appointments weekly, and the average weekly attendance at the House being one thousand. She objected to Hull House being regarded as philanthropy, though it had philanthropic tendencies and charitable departments. Citing Charles Booth’s chapter on “The Unemployed,” she regretted that working-class problems were confounded with problems of the inefficient, idle, and distressed, making solving both impossible. Working people lived on the same streets as those needing charity but required none themselves while healthy and employed. As one of them said, they required only that their aspirations be recognized and stimulated, with means provided. Calling this effort philanthropy was unfair and underestimated the duties of good citizenship.
The University Settlement Idea
Robert A. Woods of The Andover House in Boston compared the current social movement to the end of the Middle Ages, when the Crusades gave men a new view of the world and a moral impulse united classes, leading to the formation of modern nations. The present movement applied science’s conception of complex relationships and the philosophy of unity to social life. The old bond was a political compact; the new bond was a social organism. Civilization was overreaching itself, with some tendencies developing rankly before correctives operated, causing congestion in some places and atrophy in others. The goal was to unite the social body so vital influence ran to every extremity. The great city showed the danger of people cut off from civilization’s better life, and the problem extended beyond slums to factory towns and country villages cut off by distance. This situation was distinctly modern; only modern civilization could create, understand, and overcome it. Resources were ill-applied to needs, and forces must be mobilized and transferred. From the individual’s close-range view this was philanthropy; from society’s view it was far-sighted social statesmanship. Isolated philanthropy became organized social work, then public charge.
The University Settlement Idea: A Vision of Expansion
The Settlement method, the author argues, will not remain a isolated experiment. It will expand partly through adoption by churches and charitable institutions, but chiefly through an increase in the Settlements themselves as the body of trained workers grows. The author proposes that there ought to be a University Settlement in every considerable neighborhood of every great city—indeed, two per neighborhood: one for men and one for women. Each neighborhood, stirred with social energy, would respond to the “electric touch” of other neighborhoods, ennobling city life until whole cities become communities where “pure and lovely” things become the common inheritance through toil and suffering, where homes know peace and love, and streets tempt children toward righteousness rather than sin.
Settlements demonstrate that there is no “short and easy road” to a better society; every social gain requires corresponding personal effort. Social work demands more workers than previously understood, and the best type of men and women acting under the highest motives. “Not contrivances, but persons, must save society.” The resources of society are in persons; the needs of society are in persons. University Settlements offer hope to those “stifled and crushed under the gifts of society become impediments through disuse.” They provide opportunity for employing every sort of faculty, giving people the joy of power to make other lives more true to themselves. Everything one knows or is becomes an image of what may be modelled in “the yielding clay of the lives of others.”
Settlements will show colleges that what makes life better at favored centers adds to life at the extremities; every element of culture is “a means of grace.” Education will take a larger measure of the world; graduates will become “apostles to the world of men” rather than merely “priests at the altar.” Young people will emerge trained in a social sense, with zeal for using their gifts in service of those who lack them. The University Settlement may become “an organic part of the university,” perhaps one of its professional schools. A footnote observes that theological seminaries now feel the necessity of dealing with the masses; a Settlement of theological students would be nearly identical to a general University Settlement, except the religious motive remains prominent, following the same comprehensive program.
Settlements stand for “a sublime faith” in the good and beautiful life. The author wonders if since the Renaissance there has been such an assertion of the life-giving quality of culture, demonstrating that the things of culture are “in the broadest and deepest sense, humanities.” Settlements have made work among the poor interesting, shown opportunities for intelligent workers unknown before, and cast “the glamour of the morally picturesque” about social service. The task of the future is to see in human life the attraction now seen in nature. The author hopes for a time when man shall visit man his brother, each visitor a “wrestling angel,” giving the man “a new name” and leaving him with “a heavenly benediction.”
Philanthropy: Its Success and Failure — The Early American Context
James O. S. Huntington begins his examination of philanthropy by looking at its early American form. From the founding of the New England colonies to the beginning of the present century, philanthropy was “rudimentary and inchoate.” There were no Fresh Air Funds, St. Andrew’s Coffee-stands, Day Nurseries, or Newsboys’ Lodging Houses. The principal charitable institution was Harvard College, near Boston, for instructing Indian lads. Comforts were few, work hard, but problems of pauperism and mendicancy had not presented themselves. Kindly acts were merely “friendly deeds of neighbors,” often mutual benefactions. Poor people—old folks, the weak-minded, chronic invalids—were provided for at the “poor-house,” generally a farm on public land. The community held itself responsible for dependents; inmates wandered from farm to farm and were tolerated. Some individuals took advantage of hospitality, but public opinion was a mighty force. Two or three such people existed in most villages—the “Sam Lawsons” and “Jerry Lanes” of New England romance—endured as a “foil to the general energy.”
In the third and fourth decades of the century, change began in the cities, extending outward. The old homogeneity of society broke up; a pauper class appeared. In the ‘forties, the tenement-house system rose in New York, with similar conditions in Boston. The City Mission of the Episcopal Church in New York was organized in 1831; the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor in 1843. In Boston, Dr. Tuckerman set on foot efforts known as the “ministry at large.”
The author asks why State aid was not sufficient. A “long and bitter experience in England” had put the country on guard. The old English Poor Law, supplementing everyone’s income to a fixed standard out of the “rates,” proved that much distress must be left to voluntary charity. If the idle can claim support while at large, the door opens to “a perfect flood of pauperism.” Public support puts a premium on laziness and drags down wages of self-respecting workers. Dr. Thomas Chalmers, before a Parliamentary Committee on the Poor Law for Ireland, stated: “I think it is one evil of public charity that the poor, who are…” The quotation is cut off, but the argument is clear.
The Charity Organization Society and the Evolution of Method
In 1877, the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo was formed, the pioneer of many similar societies. Their object was to bring various relief agencies into mutually helpful relations with each other and with the department of public relief, the police force, the work-house, and the schools. This would enable different institutions to act harmoniously for the repression of fraud, adequate provision for the truly deserving, reclaiming those pauperized by past mistakes, encouraging thrift and self-help, and removing social abuses. Despite difficulties, Charity Organization Societies were established in seventy-three cities and towns, all in communication with each other and with like agencies abroad. The plan was effectual in preventing “overlapping” and hunting down impostors. The New York Charity Organization Society has a card catalogue with a record of a hundred and sixty thousand cases, open for reference by accredited philanthropists and the other seventy-three societies from Maine to California. This created a machine to block those who try to live by mendicity and mendacity. The passage raises the question of whether the engine sometimes “strikes wildly” and hits the wrong man, noting this question interests one according to whether one belongs to the class that investigates or the class that is investigated. The Charity Organization Society also established a penny savings-bank system, with 20,901 depositors and $10,644.79 deposited, with patrons found as far away as Pittsburgh.
Most earlier societies focused on bodily maladies and physical necessities. Schools taught rudiments but are not philanthropic due to lacking the voluntary character essential to philanthropy. Churches instructed in dogma and morality, but this lies beyond conventional philanthropy. Charitable societies regarded people as receptacles for food and requiring clothes, shelter, and medical care. Gradually, a truer conception of human nature asserted itself. Instruction in the Kindergarten system of Froebel began to quicken the perceptions of poor children. In St. Louis, over six thousand children are in eighty-five public Kindergartens. The New York Board of Education has determined to introduce Kindergartening in Primary Schools. Industrial training follows the Kindergarten, left in many places to volunteer philanthropy, though in Philadelphia and Chicago it is part of the school curriculum. New York originated kitchen-gardening, giving household work dignity.
The Philanthropy of the Future and Freedom of Opportunity
The passage opens by arguing that the philanthropy of the future will open the way for all people to perform worthy deeds. The first step toward this philanthropy must be ensuring that all able-bodied men and women have freedom of opportunity to live full and happy lives through their own exertions, not as charity recipients from another class. The author anticipates objections that freedom of opportunity already exists, citing statistics from 1490 cases of poverty observed by the New York Companies, finding twenty-nine percent owing to inability to get work and ten percent to drunkenness.
Work as a Favor Rather Than a Right
The author questions why, if freedom of opportunity to labor exists, it is almost universally considered a favor for a rich man to give a poor man work. She recounts an incident where a Slav given a job in a Pennsylvania coal mine knelt and kissed the hand of the boss who employed him, with neither man finding the action strange. She acknowledges that the poor often beg for work, though some do not always want it. Some wage-workers reportedly “look for a job, all the time praying they mayn’t find it.” The author initially found this reprehensible until one of her boys on the East Side explained his experience: after several weeks looking for work, he described how a fellow who loses his place is “crazy to get back” the first week, rising at four o’clock every morning, checking advertisements, walking all over town; but if out of work six months, “he never wants to do another stroke of work again.” The author observes that the poor regard work as a boon, and the well-to-do believe they confer a favor by giving employment. She notes the paradoxical statement that real thanks should flow from employer to laborers, since if workmen did not return more in product than they receive in wages, employers could never accumulate profits.
Work as Gratuity and the Question of True Freedom
The fact that rich and poor alike regard work as a gratuity throws light on whether freedom of opportunity truly exists. Men do not thank neighbors for allowing them to open their eyes, fill their lungs, or cast votes—these are freedoms. If men truly had freedom to use their strength to produce what they need or exchange with mutual benefit, no one would thank another for opportunity to work. The author asks what we mean by opportunity to work. It cannot mean merely exercising muscles or exhausting physical strength—a man can tire himself walking along a high-road. Physical labor cannot continue without food, shelter, and clothing. Freedom to work must mean the chance to use one’s strength to produce food, clothes, and shelter. All these things come from the earth and only from the earth. Man is a land animal; even the other gifts of God are useless without land. A few miles above the earth’s surface, the sun will not warm him, and the air will not fill his lungs. Freedom of opportunity means freedom of access to the land, for “land is opportunity.”
Historical Evidence from Thorold Rogers
The author cites the late Thorold Rogers as a careful historian of English economic changes, pre-eminently a statistician asking simply “What are the facts of the past?” A footnote notes this statement is not quite true—Rogers began his studies strongly opposed to the cause of wage-workers. In his work on six centuries of English labor, Rogers declares that in the latter part of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries, poverty such as we know it did not exist. In that “Golden Age” of labor, not one family was as poor as seven million people in England’s great cities today. Rogers sums up that in 1795, agricultural laborers’ wages, judged by food prices, were less than one-seventh of what they were in 1495.
Causes of the Change
The author examines possible causes of this tremendous change. No sudden exhaustion of the soil is reported; rather, with new roots and grasses, rotation of crops, bringing in of wastes, and improved livestock, England’s land had become indefinitely more productive. Neither currency depreciation nor the statute of laborers could have produced such misery. Even machinery cannot be blamed—machinery was still in rude beginnings and steam-power unknown when rustic laborers were dying of starvation. The one cause remaining: in the two centuries following the “good old time,” the land was “stolen from the people”—the opprobrious term used deliberately. In the fourteenth century, every family had or could have its place upon the soil; commons existed where the poorest man could pasture goats, sheep, or geese without tax or toll. The change of old military duties into money-payment made ruling classes greedy for land. Little by little, through stealthy aggressions by individual landlords or open assaults in a parliament controlled by the landed interest, common lands were enclosed until not one person in a thousand in England owns an acre of native soil.
The American Situation
The same destructive forces have worked more rapidly in America, where immemorial precedents and belief in social duties hardly exist, and where the sense that natural opportunities are limited and monopolized makes men fierce in struggle. Some will deny the relation between land-grabbing and poverty, missing the significance of Ben Tillett’s epigram: “For every acre of land in England that goes out of tillage one more man knocks on the dock-yard gates for a job.” They object that not all can become farmers, that the poor will not leave cities, that deserted farms exist in New Hampshire, that people can go West, or that immigration must be limited. The author compares such arguments to reasoning with a lady who, told of extortionate fines on New York factory girls, responds that things cannot be so.
The Popular Notion of Philanthropy
The passage shifts to James O. S. Huntington’s essay, opening with the conclusion of a preceding argument that no class should be released from sharing in the world’s work. Since slavery’s abolition, land-ownership creates an idle class. True philanthropy must care for those who work too little as well as those who work too much, and must have “charity” eradicated from it, recognizing universal democracy in politics and economics—at the ballot-box, in the factory, and in the shop. Huntington identifies a widely diffused notion that doing good to fellow-men is simple and easy. The popular demand is for “practical” beneficence opposed to theory-based charity. It is assumed that controversies about “ultimate truths and abstract propositions” set men at odds, and that if men devoted themselves to doing good, the world’s sufferings would be removed. The “service of humanity” is proposed as a substitute for creeds, dogmas, devotional formularies, and ethical systems. The common argument states: “Conduct is three-fourths of life”; outworn theologies have wasted energies trying to know an unknowable God and focused believers on saving their own souls rather than improving the world. The conclusion drawn is to make the poor comfortable and leave heavenly affairs for later.
Huntington’s Sympathy and Caveat
Huntington expresses sympathy with this spirit—seeing it as generous impatience with empty phrases, hollow forms, and barren speculations, with hearty interest in others’ welfare. However, he asks whether there is an error in setting the “practical” against the theoretical, in assuming men will act unselfishly when grounds for self-subdual are forgotten or denied, and in believing philanthropy resting on no moral sanction can advance social progress. Taking “doing good to people” as descriptive of philanthropy, he notes it means “doing good to all people,” not benefiting one class at another’s expense.
The Temptations of Wealth and the Failure of Charity
The passage argues that the rich are especially prone to pleasant self-delusions, and that it is a moral duty to avoid strengthening this temptation. Modern philanthropy, however, does exactly that: it allows wealthy men and women to smother the voice of conscience under a host of benefactions without giving up any comfort or enjoyment. Worse, these charities draw forth flattery, leaving the donor “bespattered with praise.” The example is given of an owner of fifty million dollars, whose imagination has been impoverished by the vastness of his possessions, giving fifty thousand dollars to a philanthropic object. This makes no appreciable difference to his luxuries—no more than fifty cents would to an ordinary person—yet he is “lauded to the skies” for his “deed of noble self-denial.” It is hard not to believe what everybody says about you, especially when it eases your conscience, and this is another way modern philanthropy fails to contribute to morality.
The passage then turns to strikes. While many are unjustifiable, it is not often confessed that almost every strike contains much that is heroic, unselfish, and highly moral. The example is given of men receiving the highest wages in their trade who, for the sake of men they have never seen, are ready to quit their work and face poverty, imprisonment, and even death. The author asks how many rich men would do as much for their dearest friends. Present philanthropy has no sympathy for such morality, condemning all strikes indiscriminately and refusing aid even to the women and children who had no part in the matter. The author qualifies this by noting the exception of the Oxford University Mission during the great dock-strike in London in 1889, which did large relief-work among the strikers and lost rich friends as a result. Modern philanthropy not only fails to recognize this morality but deliberately declares that to qualify for charity, a man must throw overboard any regard for the industrial welfare of his fellows. Many philanthropic institutions, especially religious ones, pay their employees less than the majority of laborers receive, have their buildings erected by “scab” bricklayers, and their printing done by “bum” printers. The author condemns the hypocrisy of lady-managers of an orphan asylum who expect a hired nurse-girl to be content with less than a private family would pay because she is working “for the Lord,” robbing her of half her wages on earth while neglecting to print her name among the benefactors.
The author then asks what cure is proposed, or whether we should abandon all charitable efforts. The answer is that morality must precede philanthropy. Before we can do good we must do right. We must hunger and thirst after justice before we can be merciful. Mercy without Justice will not be Mercy. If we ignore the right and start out merely to do good, we shall make ourselves the judges of the good, saying, “These people do not know what is really good for them, but I do.” Once that is said, no atrocity may not find shelter under so specious a pretext. The first thing to settle is that we must first of all be right ourselves, and then do the right regardless of consequences.
The Doctrine of Man Created by Society
The passage opens by noting that the doctrine of man’s creation by society was not fully developed by its earliest formulators. Aristotle’s comparative study of 158 different communities enabled him to demonstrate in detail how and why the good life can exist only in the organized state—a theoretical and practical advance beyond Plato’s speculative insight. The author asserts that modern study of social progress represents both theoretical and practical advancement beyond Plato and Aristotle. While modern science may discover few truths not glimpsed in ancient Greece, science’s mission is the patient conversion of insight into sight, of dialectic into knowledge. Our advantage over Aristotle lies in minute, relatively precise knowledge of the biological and social change processes by which brutality transforms into humanity. This knowledge is itself a new factor in the social process, enabling man to play with knowledge of every move’s meaning.
The passage brings together partial explanations from Athens with those of our own day: the action of a social medium upon intelligence and character, plus natural selection and survival, together created human faculty. As Mr. Wallace showed, mental resource came to count for more than physical strength. Intelligence created by association depends on association for perpetuation. Deprived of comradeship, men return to brutality. Creatures best equipped with social habit have won supremacy. Society is a means to a definite end: survival through progressive evolution of intelligence and sympathy. No worthy sociology exists that is not an elaboration of this principle. Society as an end in itself is unthinkable. The Greeks understood that without society there is no individual moral life, but they failed to combine static with dynamic factors, unable to reach the modern notion of a moving equilibrium. Life is not a fixed number of jugglers’ plates but a whirl where new plates appear constantly.
Personality is the highest synthetic product of mental evolution: well-unified, self-conscious mental life, harmonious, capable of expansion, sympathetic. The fundamental word is integrity—wholeness. If integrity and utility conflict, utility yields, since self-conservation precedes self-expansion. But no enduring integrity exists without development, so ethics expands into utilitarianism. Personality comes into being only in relatively perfect society, beyond tribalism and narrow nationalism. Faith in progress has been essential to every religious belief. Charity-workers in Paris and London report shadowy belief in better conditions as the last trace of religious consciousness among the very poor. This faith is the motive power of moral life; science must rectify it, but faith itself is the beginning of righteousness. Human society is not a something-for-nothing order. Available energy is strictly limited; all progress is conditioned by cost, which increases with progress. Since society is an organic aggregate, no social gain occurs without break-up of established relations somewhere. Translated into feeling: destruction of familiar relations means hardship. There can be no social progress except at the price of absolute increase of suffering, borne mostly vicariously by displaced classes.
The Cost of Progress and the Suffering Minority
The passage opens with the assertion that those who secure the joys of a richer and ampler life are not the ones who suffer the costs. What enormously benefits mankind is often the irretrievable ruin of the few. Industrial progress offers striking examples, showing that even after society settles into peace, the fundamental conditions of development remain unchanged. The sociologist expects the minority suffering the pains of progress to be the most unprogressive elements, but also finds that some sufferers are victims of pure misfortune. In thirteenth and fourteenth century England, the growth of towns and money payments loosened the bonds holding serfs to the manor. England experienced unprecedented economic prosperity, but earlier economic equality disappeared. The energetic controlled more; the easy-going got on with less. This comparative freedom of enterprise stimulated activity making England richer and stronger, but destroyed the old economic footing of the less competent, leaving them as a wage-earning class.
Two hundred years later, geographical discovery transformed society again. Hyndman calls this the “iron age of the peasantry and wage classes,” yet admits it was a period of marvellous progress. But the splendor had a price. Barons enclosed common lands and evicted tenants to convert agricultural lands into sheep pastures. Their misery was not due to actual lack of land or industrial opportunity—there remained land enough and to spare had it been used rightly. But the social value of land had become too great for their wasteful methods; they had to change or go. If the world was to become larger and better for the alert, on-moving many, the sacrifice of the sluggish had to be.
The Ethics of Social Progress (Conclusion)
The concluding section of this chapter argues that the ecclesiastical world has come to believe Christianity must prove its worth by solving social problems. Yet, the most important doctrine Christianity offers to social science is forgotten: the distinction between those “free from the law” and those “under bondage to the law.” The author posits that one portion of every community is inherently progressive, resourceful, and capable of self-mastery, while another portion is not and can only be made useful and free by being brought under “bondage to society” and kept under “mastership and discipline” until they can govern themselves. Society disregards this doctrine, except in the juridical distinction between law-abiding and criminal, wrongly applying laissez-faire or socialism uniformly to all men and industries, and confounding unlike things.
The passage outlines ethical obligations for the progressive, self-governing members of society, which include three duties. First, resist the tendency to subordinate higher considerations to mere competitive activity, which becomes an end in itself; for ambitious children, all competition should be put away, as competitive examinations are called “essential crime, essential insanity, essential idiocy.” Second, resort more freely to country-life, especially providing its conditions for children, both their own and those of the city poor. Third, cultivate true individuality in the consumption of wealth, which gives a competitive advantage to higher industrial qualities.
The duties society must discharge also fall into three groups. Society must assume regulation of international migration, making each nation bear the burden of pauperism and degeneracy it causes, and regulate through industrial and labor legislation those industries where free competition displaces the better man for the inferior; some industries may come under public management as socialism proposes. Society must act on the fact that a portion of its population is always practically unfree by extending compulsory education to children of parents unable or unwilling to provide approved training, fitting the poor for life in a changing world. Society should literally enslave all men and women who voluntarily choose a life of vagabondage—every tramp should be arrested and put to severe, enforced labor under public direction.
The passage notes a negative duty of restraint, as reform and philanthropy have a cost; if hurried, they may defeat themselves. It cites Italian students of criminal anthropology, Lombroso and Laschi, who define political crime as the attempt to accomplish reforms society is not ready for, proposing the scientific name philoneism for devotion to progress and misoneism for the dread of change. Society is misoneistic, so change must be slow. The section concludes with a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “The intelligence of the universe is social… it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior… and has brought together into concord… the things which are the best.”
The Principles and Chief Dangers of the Administration of Charity
This new chapter, by Bernard Bosanquet of London, states he will illustrate principles of charity organization purely by London experience. He defines the principle of the work as “faith in character” or “faith in the ideal,” which must be the essence of the real, not mere sentiment. He clarifies that “charity” means “neighborly service,” and “organization of charity” means “concerted action in neighborly service.” Two essential factors are identified: a high and definite conception of human welfare, and concerted action or division of labor between all agencies doing neighborly service.
He explains the danger of not having a plan, which leads to chance interferences that undermine character. He references the founding of the London Charity Organisation Society over twenty years ago, which aimed to make existing relief expenditure do good instead of harm. He describes a typical London district with a population of 90,000, including 3000 “very” poor and 18,000 “poor” based on Mr. Charles Booth’s figures. He lists the various agencies operating in the district: four old-established benevolent societies, six parishes of the Established Church, three or four Nonconformist organizations, two Roman Catholic churches with a branch of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, three hospitals, a free dispensary, a provident dispensary, district nurses, private charitable ladies, and the Poor Law machinery with its workhouse, infirmary, schools, and outdoor relief under a Board of Guardians.
He describes the mischief done in the absence of organization in three ways: as doles, as overlapping, and as the down-grade to pauperism. Planless scattering of tickets and shillings creates a gambling spirit, encourages the desire to look poor, and undercuts wages. When several agencies help the same person, it forces the poor into fraud; if a Presbyterian and a Roman Catholic are helping the same person, they should interchange information. Doles and overlapping, with careless administration, accustom people to “chance it” rather than provide for themselves, leading to the workhouse. The great provident institutions of the British working-class have no chance where unorganized charity prevails.
Organizing a District and Administering Relief
The passage defines “organizing a district” as transforming a “charitable chaos” into an orderly, friendly neighborhood where rich and poor consult together and unite resources. The goal is not only relief of individual cases but also control of general influences. Usually there are plenty of workers and institutions, but because workers are untrained and both workers and institutions are unorganized, little beneficial and much injurious work results. Administering relief is a secondary duty of a committee but must be distinguished from “providing” it; as the committee fuses with the neighborhood, its relief work should pass into the neighborhood’s relief work in consultation.
Help should be given as to a friend or relation in misfortune. “Unction and ostentatious ‘sympathy'” are of little use; a “friendly business-like tone,” like that of a sympathetic lawyer or doctor, is preferred. Inquiries should carry no moral judgment but presuppose the duty of helping if effectively possible. Such inquiries are not painful to respectable people beyond the pain of applying to strangers. An illustrative case is given: a boy appearing ill-nourished was given half-penny dinners at school—”broadcast help” condemned as too little. Inquiry revealed a respectable family whose father, a copper-worker, was disabled by chest-disease; the wife and one boy earned something. The Charity Organisation Society raised over twenty pounds, ultimately setting the family up in different work and saving it from pauperism. This cost money, thought, and trouble, but saved a family.
With persistent ill-luck, “there is almost always a screw loose in character,” making knowledge of a case’s history necessary. One should catch people at their first folly. Illness causing want of work breaks down families; transient illness is aggravated by want of food. Every English workman earning decent wages can join Friendly Societies—the highest payment about two pounds a year secures eighteen shillings a week for six months. One would not help a man in mere illness who had not saved in this or an equivalent way. Refusal with explanation educates people; a charitable agency is judged by the character of cases brought to it.
Raising Money, Visiting, and Convalescent Aid
Relief is a form of organization; the society prefers to raise money specially on each case rather than use general funds. This enforces family ties and neighborly duties. The first question is “Who is bound to help in this case?” Relatives at a distance are often glad to be asked. It tests work, requiring a plan securing approval of helpers. A large general fund is dangerous, making one independent and disinclined to press for help from existing agencies.
Main Arguments
The book advances several interconnected arguments about philanthropy, social reform, and the obligations of educated and wealthy citizens. The central argument, articulated by Jane Addams, is that democracy must be extended beyond political expression into social affairs. America’s view of democracy has been partial, with its best achievement along the franchise line. Democracy has made little attempt to assert itself in social affairs. Addams argues that giving the franchise to immigrants while deriding their past lives and feeling no duty to invite them to our houses is a form of hypocrisy. She compares the politician who sells offices to the highest bidder with the woman who invites only those who bring equal social return, calling both unmindful of the common weal.
A second major argument concerns the breakdown of the social organism in large cities. Addams describes how large districts of great cities have become isolated from the rest of society. Many residents are very poor, lacking leisure or energy beyond subsistence. They move frequently between wretched lodgings, live side by side without knowing each other, without fellowship, local tradition, public spirit, or social organization. Those who could help—people with social tact, training, large houses, and traditions of hospitality—live elsewhere. This division of the city into rich and poor, with the favored expressing obligation through money gifts and the unfavored clamoring for a “share,” is unjustifiable because the isolated people add nothing to social progress when they are cut off from it.
Addams also argues that young educated people feel the insincerity of this situation most keenly. They are “cultivated into unnourished, over-sensitive lives,” shut off from common labor, feeling a fatal want of harmony between theory and life. Their hopes are formulated as follows: in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses; a higher civic life can only be fostered through common intercourse; the blessings of refinement must be made universal to be permanent; and good secured for oneself is precarious until secured for all.
Robert A. Woods argues that the Settlement movement represents a new stage in social evolution. He contends that civilization is overreaching itself: some tendencies develop rankly before correctives operate, causing congestion in some places and atrophy in others. The goal is to unite the social body so vital influence runs to every extremity. Safety and freedom are no longer the only ends; the concern is the living out of life. Woods argues that existing agencies—law, charity, churches—leave great tracts of life unentered. A personal influence is needed: a person acting in close intimacy as a neighbor, joining neighborhood life, sympathizing with everyone, not establishing a propaganda or methods, not hurrying, not anxious about results.
Woods also argues that culture itself is provincial and ignorant. Culture has progressed by imaging the world’s life, but vast sections of mankind are undiscovered country to the cultured. He quotes Arnold Toynbee writing to Oxford friends: “Our delicate, impalpable sorrows; our keen, aching, darling emotions; how strange, almost unreal they seem by the side of the great mass of filthy misery that clogs the life of great cities.” Settlements stand for a double urgency: giving what universities have in abundance and gaining what they need.
Father Huntington argues that the history of philanthropy shows both progress and persistent dangers. He traces the evolution from the simple neighborly charity of colonial New England to the organized charitable societies of the late nineteenth century. He argues that public charity alone is insufficient, citing the “long and bitter experience in England” with the old English Poor Law, which supplemented everyone’s income to a fixed standard out of the “rates” and proved that much distress must be left to voluntary charity. If the idle can claim support while at large, the door opens to “a perfect flood of pauperism.” Public support puts a premium on laziness and drags down the wages of self-respecting workers.
Huntington also argues that philanthropy has evolved from merely providing physical necessities to recognizing the full range of human faculties. Man is created not only to produce but also to enjoy. Philanthropy advanced when it recognized its subjects as potential producers, but it was hardly begun until it could waken distinctly human faculties of social intercourse, intellectual pleasure, and artistic delight. He illustrates this with the story of the Apollo Club in Chicago, where a messenger-boy, hearing a rehearsal, exclaimed, “Oh, sir, I wish you’d waited two hours, I never heard anything like it in my life.” The club responded by repeating performances for wage-workers at reduced ticket prices.
Key Concepts
The book introduces and develops several specific concepts that structure its argument about philanthropy and social progress.
The first key concept is the “Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” which Addams defines as the analysis of the motives that impel educated young people to establish Settlements. She divides these motives into three lines: the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, extending democracy beyond political expression; the impulse to share the race life and bring civilization’s accumulation to those who have little; and a renaissance of Christianity toward its early humanitarian aspects.
The second key concept is the “social organism.” Both Addams and Woods use this term to describe the interdependence of all members of society. Addams argues that the social organism has broken down in large districts of great cities, where residents live side by side without knowing each other, without fellowship, local tradition, public spirit, or social organization. Woods argues that the old bond of society was a political compact; the new bond is a social organism. The goal of social reform is to unite the social body so that vital influence runs to every extremity.
The third key concept is the “race life.” Addams describes a “great desire to share the race life” as a fundamental human impulse. She argues that we bear traces of the starvation struggle that made up the life of the race; our organism holds memories of ancestors’ long life. Nothing deadens sympathies like keeping away from opportunities for helpfulness and ignoring the starvation struggle of half the race. To shut oneself away is to live out but half the humanity we inherit.
The fourth key concept is the “Settlement” itself. Addams describes Hull House as Chicago’s first Settlement, established in September 1889, opened by two women backed by friends. It was situated amid large foreign colonies that isolate themselves in American cities. Hull House endeavors to make social intercourse express the growing sense of economic unity of society, adding the social function to democracy. Woods defines the University Settlement as a place where educated men and women live in poor neighborhoods, acting as neighbors rather than missionaries or reformers. The Settlement is based on the principle that “Vain will be music, art, higher education, or even the gospel, unless they come clothed in the life of brother men.”
The fifth key concept is the “Charity Organization Society.” Huntington describes the founding of the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo in 1877 as the pioneer of many similar societies. Their object was to bring various relief agencies into mutually helpful relations with each other and with the department of public relief, the police force, the work-house, and the schools. This would enable different institutions to act harmoniously for the repression of fraud, adequate provision for the truly deserving, reclaiming those pauperized by past mistakes, encouraging thrift and self-help, and removing social abuses. The New York Charity Organization Society maintained a card catalogue with a record of a hundred and sixty thousand cases, open for reference by accredited philanthropists and the other seventy-three societies from Maine to California.
The sixth key concept is the “sweating system.” Addams describes how Hebrews and Italians in Chicago’s ward did the finishing work for clothing manufacturers, work formerly done by Americans, Irish, and Germans who refused the low prices of the sweating system. The design of the sweating system is to eliminate rent from clothing manufacture, so “outside work” begins after the clothing leaves the cutter. An unscrupulous contractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too small for his workroom, as these conditions imply low rental.
The seventh key concept is “democratic sentiment.” Adams characterizes the lectures’ chief feature as democratic sentiment—not democracy as a form of government but as a social ideal, purpose, and feeling. This concept underlies the entire book’s argument that democracy must be extended from the political sphere into social and economic life.
The eighth key concept is the “information and interpretation bureau.” Addams describes this as perhaps the chief value of a Settlement to its neighborhood, certainly to the newly arrived foreigner. Without endowment and without capital itself, the Settlement constantly acts between the various institutions of the city and the people for whose benefit these institutions were erected. Hospitals, county agencies, and State asylums are often but vague rumors to the people who need them most.
Themes
The book develops several recurring themes that give it depth and coherence beyond its specific arguments about philanthropy and Settlements.
One significant theme is the relationship between theory and practice. Addams repeatedly emphasizes the “fatal want of harmony between theory and life” experienced by young educated people. They are “cultivated into unnourished, over-sensitive lives,” shut off from common labor. The Settlement movement is presented as an attempt to bridge this gap, to translate philosophy into deed. Addams notes that all are uncomfortable about the sincerity of their phrases because they hesitate to translate philosophy into deed. The Settlement is the mechanism for this translation.
Another theme is the critique of conventional philanthropy. Addams objects to Hull House being regarded as philanthropy, though it has philanthropic tendencies and charitable departments. She cites Charles Booth’s chapter on “The Unemployed,” which regrets that working-class problems are confounded with problems of the inefficient, idle, and distressed—confounding them makes solving both impossible. Working people live on the same streets as those needing charity but require none themselves while healthy and employed. As one of them said, they require only that their aspirations be recognized and stimulated, with means provided. Calling this effort philanthropy is unfair and underestimates the duties of good citizenship.
A related theme is the inadequacy of mere material relief. Huntington traces the evolution of philanthropy from providing food, clothes, shelter, and medical care to recognizing the full range of human faculties. He argues that man is created not only to produce but also to enjoy. The story of the messenger-boy at the Apollo Club rehearsal illustrates this theme: the boy’s hunger for beauty and music is as real as physical hunger, and philanthropy must address it.
The theme of democracy as a social ideal rather than merely a political form runs throughout the book. Adams introduces this theme in his introduction, and Addams develops it in her essays. She argues that America’s view of democracy has been partial, with its best achievement along the franchise line. Democracy has made little attempt to assert itself in social affairs. The Settlement is presented as a means of extending democracy into social life, of making social intercourse express the growing sense of economic unity of society.
The theme of the city as both problem and opportunity is also prominent. Addams describes the conditions of a specific ward in Chicago: dirty streets, inadequate schools, unenforced factory legislation, bad street-lighting, miserable paving, and hundreds of houses unconnected to the street sewer. The ward contains 255 saloons, allowing one saloon to every twenty-eight voters. Yet the city is also a place of diversity and variety, where one can see peasant life in Chicago—Bohemians, Italians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, and Arabs—vainly trying to adjust their peasant life to a large city. Woods argues that the great city shows the danger of people cut off from civilization’s better life, but also that Settlements should be located in the midst of great metropolitan poor districts, not distant sequestered quarters.
The theme of religion and its social expression is developed primarily by Addams. She describes a “renaissance of Christianity” toward its early humanitarian aspects. She argues that Jesus had no set of truths labelled “Religious.” His doctrine was that all truth is one, that the appropriation of it is freedom. His teaching had no dogma to mark it off from truth and action. He called it a revelation—a life. The early Christians received the Gospel message, a command to love all men, with joyous simplicity. They believed in love as a cosmic force. The Settlement movement is one manifestation of the wider humanitarian movement throughout Christendom, endeavoring to embody itself not in a sect but in society itself.
The theme of education as deliverance is also significant. Addams cites Froebel’s definition of education as “deliverance” of body and mind forces. The untrained must be delivered from constraint before faculties can be used. She quotes Mazzini, “greatest of all democrats,” who said education is not merely a necessity of true life but “a Holy Communion with generations dead and living.” When withheld for generations, as with the Italian peasant, people point and say “He is like a beast of the field.” A Settlement protests against restricted views of education.
The theme of the stranger and the forlorn feeling of arriving in a new city is touched upon by Addams, who recalls the forlorn feeling of arriving early morning as a stranger in a city. This personal experience grounds her argument in genuine emotion and connects the Settlement’s mission to the universal human experience of displacement and the need for connection.
The Author’s Conclusions
The book concludes with Father Huntington’s essay on philanthropy, which ends with the story of the Apollo Club in Chicago. The club, with four hundred members including some of the wealthiest in the city, was conducting a rehearsal when a messenger-boy came with a telegram. The leader, Mr. Tomlins, left him waiting until the chorus was finished, then begged the boy’s pardon. He saw the boy was pale, his mouth agape, tears streaming. The boy exclaimed, “Oh, sir, I wish you’d waited two hours, I never heard anything like it in my life.” Mr. Tomlins remarked to a friend, “If there’s that kind of hunger in the people we shall have to feed them.” Later, Mr. Tomlins proposed to the club that they repeat every performance the next night for wage-workers, selling tickets at fifteen and twenty-five cents. The first oratorio was “The Messiah,” repeated with the same care. Tickets were sold at factories. The Auditorium holds forty-five hundred people; there was a demand for twenty thousand tickets. A friend told the author, “I have heard the Hallelujah Chorus twenty-five times…”
This concluding anecdote encapsulates the book’s central conclusions. Philanthropy, properly understood, is not merely the provision of material necessities but the recognition and feeding of the full range of human hunger—including the hunger for beauty, music, and social connection. The messenger-boy’s tears and his wish that the rehearsal had lasted two hours demonstrate that the desire for culture and beauty is universal, not confined to the educated and wealthy. The Apollo Club’s response—repeating performances for wage-workers at affordable prices—shows how the resources of the privileged can be shared with those who lack them, not as charity but as a recognition of common humanity.
The book concludes that the Settlement movement, and philanthropy more broadly, must be based on the recognition of mutual dependence and the reciprocal nature of social relationships. Addams states this explicitly: Hull House opened on the theory that the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal. The Settlement is not a place where the rich help the poor but a place where different classes meet as neighbors and learn from each other. Woods argues that “Not contrivances, but persons, must save society.” The resources of society are in persons; the needs of society are in persons.
The book also concludes that the Settlement movement represents a new stage in social evolution, comparable to the formation of modern nations after the Crusades. The old bond was a political compact; the new bond is a social organism. Settlements are the means by which this new bond is forged, by which educated young people enter into the life of poor neighborhoods and bring the resources of civilization to those who lack them. The University Settlement may become “an organic part of the university,” perhaps one of its professional schools.
Finally, the book concludes that the work of social reform is ongoing and requires sustained personal effort. Woods argues that Settlements demonstrate that there is no “short and easy road” to a better society; every social gain requires corresponding personal effort. Social work demands more workers than previously understood, and the best type of men and women acting under the highest motives. The task of the future is to see in human life the attraction now seen in nature, and to hope for a time when man shall visit man his brother, each visitor a “wrestling angel,” giving the man “a new name” and leaving him with “a heavenly benediction.”
Significance
The significance of Philanthropy and Social Progress lies in its position at a pivotal moment in the history of American social reform. The book captures the transition from the older model of neighborly charity to the organized philanthropy and Settlement movement of the late nineteenth century. It brings together some of the most important figures in this movement—Jane Addams, Robert A. Woods, Father James O. S. Huntington, Franklin H. Giddings, and Bernard Bosanquet—and presents their thinking at a formative stage.
The book is particularly significant for its articulation of the Settlement movement’s philosophy. Jane Addams’s essays on the subjective necessity and objective value of Social Settlements provide a foundational statement of the movement’s aims and methods. Her analysis of the motives that impel educated young people to establish Settlements—the desire to extend democracy into social affairs, the impulse to share the race life, and the renaissance of Christianity—remains a classic formulation of the Settlement ideal. Her description of Hull House’s operations in its early years provides a detailed picture of how a Settlement actually functioned.
Robert A. Woods’s essay on the University Settlement Idea is significant for its comprehensive vision of the movement’s potential. His argument that Settlements should be located in the midst of great metropolitan poor districts, that residents should study their neighborhoods scientifically, and that Settlements should cooperate with local organizations and religious forces, established principles that guided the movement for decades. His insistence that “Not contrivances, but persons, must save society” captured the movement’s fundamental conviction.
Father Huntington’s essays on philanthropy’s success and failure provide a historical perspective on American charitable work. His account of the evolution from colonial neighborly charity to the Charity Organization Society movement traces the development of organized philanthropy and identifies both its achievements and its dangers. His argument that philanthropy must recognize the full range of human faculties, including the hunger for beauty and music, broadened the conception of what charitable work should accomplish.
The book is also significant for its international perspective. Bernard Bosanquet’s essay on the principles and chief dangers of the administration of charity draws on the experience of the Charity Organization of London, bringing English insights to American readers. The book thus represents an early example of transatlantic exchange in social reform thinking.
The book’s significance extends to its documentation of specific social conditions in late nineteenth-century Chicago. Addams’s description of the ward around Hull House—its saloons, churches, housing conditions, immigrant populations, and political corruption—provides a valuable historical record of urban life in this period. Her account of the sweating system, the inadequate tenement housing, and the breakdown of civic services offers a detailed picture of the problems the Settlement movement sought to address.
Finally, the book is significant for its articulation of a democratic social ideal. Adams characterizes the lectures’ chief feature as democratic sentiment—not democracy as a form of government but as a social ideal, purpose, and feeling. The book argues that democracy must be extended from the political sphere into social and economic life, that the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal, and that the blessings of refinement must be made universal to be permanent.
