Twenty Years at Hull House · Chapter
Public Activities and Investigations explained
This chapter details Hull House's evolution from local, concrete investigations to broader public activities and national reform efforts.
What happens
This chapter details Hull House's evolution from local, concrete investigations to broader public activities and national reform efforts. Addams describes how the settlement's work merged with larger organizations, including housing studies, industrial investigations, and advocacy for a Children's Bureau. She reflects on the shift from charitable methods to systemic reform, the challenges of urban immigrant housing, and the romantic discoveries of internationalism in a cosmopolitan neighborhood. The chapter also recounts the establishment of a public playground, visits from English reformers, and the gradual absorption of settlement residents into the larger community.
Themes in this chapter
Social Reform and the Settlement Movement
Hull House evolves from local investigations to broader public activities, merging with larger organizations to address housing, labor, and child welfare.
Immigration and Cultural Assimilation
The chapter highlights immigrant housing conditions, traditional activities in tenements, and the gradual loss of provincialism through interethnic contact.
Class and Economic Inequality
Investigations into the sewing trades, industrial exhibits, and the desire of manual workers to understand the relation of their labor to the whole product.
Democracy and Civic Engagement
Residents testify before Congress, advocate for a Children's Bureau, and work with city commissions to improve housing and playgrounds.
Characters to notice
- Jane Addams
Narrator and central figure; reflects on Hull House's public activities and her own involvement in peace movements.
- Dr. Graham Taylor
Founder of Chicago Commons; his work on industrial insurance and industrial diseases commissions exemplifies settlement experience in public undertakings.
- Dr. Alice Hamilton
Hull House resident leading factory investigation into industrial diseases; noted for her scientific attainment and long residence in an industrial neighborhood.
- John Hobson
Visited the Italian quarter twice, thirteen years apart; remembered details of housing conditions and recommended improvements.
- Florence Kelley
Implied as a Hull House resident involved in industrial investigations and advocacy for women and children in industry.
- Julia C. Lathrop
Implied as a Hull House resident involved in public activities and investigations.
- Miss Norah Hamilton
Implied as a Hull House resident; associated with the settlement's activities.
Key passages
“The investigations of Hull House thus tend to be merged with those of larger organizations, from the investigation of the social value of saloons made for the Committee of Fifty in 1896, to the one on infant mortality in relation to nationality, made for the American Academy of Science in 1909.”
Hull House's research efforts increasingly became part of broader studies conducted by national bodies, ranging from an 1896 study on saloons for the Committee of Fifty to a 1909 study on infant mortality and nationality for the American Academy of Science.
Shows the expansion of Hull House's investigative scope from local to national level.
“And so a Settlement is led along from the concrete to the abstract, as may easily be illustrated.”
A settlement is naturally guided from specific, tangible problems to broader, more theoretical concerns.
Describes the intellectual progression of settlement work.
“The desire of the manual worker to know the relation of his own labor to the whole is not only legitimate but must form the basis of any intelligent action for his improvement.”
Workers' wish to understand how their individual labor fits into the larger economic system is both valid and essential for meaningful reform.
Highlights the importance of worker education and systemic understanding.
“We are all so besotted with our novel reading that we have lost the power of seeing certain aspects of life with any sense of reality because we are continually looking for the possible romance.”
Our obsession with novels has blinded us to the real aspects of life, as we constantly seek romantic narratives.
Quoting Mr. Howells to critique the tendency to romanticize reality.
“I have always objected to the phrase 'sociological laboratory' applied to us, because Settlements should be something much more human and spontaneous than such a phrase connotes.”
I have always disliked calling settlements 'sociological laboratories' because they ought to be more humane and natural than that term suggests.
Addams rejects a clinical label for the settlement's work.
