The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Civilization and Its Discontents 507

laws, the regulation of the labor of women and chil-
dren, and better schools. They employed private
resources to establish playgrounds in the slums, along
with libraries, classes in everything from child nutri-
tion and home management to literature and arts and
crafts, social clubs, and day-care centers. When they
observed that many poor families were so occupied
with the struggle to survive that they were neglecting
or even abandoning their children, they tried to place
the children in foster homes in the country.
In Boston Robert A. Woods organized clubs to
get the youngsters of the South End off the streets,
helped establish a restaurant where a meal could be
had for five cents, acted as an arbitrator in labor dis-
putes, and lobbied for laws tightening up the fran-
chises of public utility companies. In Chicago Jane
Addams developed an outstanding cultural program
that included classes in music and art and an excellent
“little theater” group. Hull House soon boasted a
gymnasium, a day nursery, and several social clubs.
Addams also worked tirelessly and effectively for
improved public services and for social legislation of all
kinds. She even got herself appointed garbage inspec-
tor in her ward and hounded local landlords and the
garbage contractor until something approaching
decent service was established.
A few critics considered the settlement houses
mere devices to socialize the unruly poor by teaching
them the “punctilios of upper-class propriety,” but
almost everyone appreciated their virtues. By the end
of the century the Catholics, laggard in entering the
arena of practical social reform, were joining the
movement, partly because they were losing many
communicants to socially minded Protestant churches.
The first Catholic-run settlement house was founded
in 1898 in an Italian district of New York. Two years

later Brownson House in Los Angeles, catering chiefly

to Mexican immigrants, threw open its doors.

With all their accomplishments, the settlement

houses seemed to be fighting a losing battle. “Private

beneficence,” Jane Addams wrote of Hull House, “is

totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the

city’s disinherited.” Much as a tropical forest grows

faster than a handful of men armed with machetes can

cut it down, so the slums, fed by an annual influx of

hundreds of thousands, blighted new areas more

rapidly than settlement house workers could clean up

old ones. It became increasingly apparent that the

wealth and authority of the state must be brought to

bear in order to keep abreast of the problem.

Civilization and Its Discontents

As the nineteenth century died, the majority of the

American people, especially those comfortably well-

off, the residents of small towns, the shopkeepers,

and some farmers and skilled workers, remained

confirmed optimists and uncritical admirers of their

civilization. However, blacks, immigrants, and oth-

ers who failed to share equitably in the good things

of life, along with a growing number of humanitar-

ian reformers, found little to cheer about and much

to lament in their increasingly industrialized society.

Giant monopolies flourished despite federal restric-

tions. The gap between rich and poor appeared to

be widening while the slum spread its poison and

the materially successful made a god of their suc-

cess. Human values seemed in grave danger of

being crushed by impersonal forces typified by the

great corporations.

In 1871 Walt Whitman, usually so full of extrav-

agant praise for everything American, had called his

Table 18.1 Reformers and the Urban Poor

Person Occupation Action Consequences

Jacob Riis,

Lewis Hine

Photojournalists Increased public awareness of poor immi-

grants’ living conditions

Stimulated reform movements

Horace Mann Educator Favored state laws that supported public

education

Increased proportion of young

people in school

Dwight L.

Moody

Lay evangelist Encouraged people to consult the Bible for

moral guidance and refrain from vice

Promoted spread of YMCA (1850)

and Salvation Army (1880) in

immigrant districts

Washington

Gladden

Congregationalist

minister

Persuaded people that they are obliged

as Christians to improve conditions in

the slums

Advanced the “social gospel”

Jane Addams,

Robert Woods,

and Lillian Wald

Settlement house

organizers

Showed immigrants and impoverished peo-

ple how to cope with urban conditions

Constructed playgrounds and

provided social clubs, day-care

centers, and schools