Settlement Houses In The Progressive Era

These settlement housing complexes, along with other emerging municipally supported housing and projects, were failing considerably as time went on, in more ways than not. Ways these housing and government projects were failing were in hygiene and sanitation, in addition to perishable products that went uninspected, like meat and dairy products, which eventually made citizens very ill, and even killed a few. Local factories emitting toxic fumes also did not help the issue at all8

Another goal of theirs was to improve city life. The Hull House wasn’t just a place where immigrants could participate in programs and learn, but it was a place where they were able to feel safe and get the support and assistance they needed to live a normal life in the large city of Chicago.

Jane Addams was a Progressive reformer and famous advocate for the settlement house movement. Addams mostly focused on improving social conditions for immigrants and for other residents of urban slums. Jane Addams’s health problem caused her to become famous reformer. In 1881 she travelled many medical schools. In one of her journey she took her friend Ellen Gates Starr with her. They visited well known Toynbee Hall in London. The purpose of Toynbee Hall was to reduce urban problems such as poverty. This visitation inspired them to create one settlement house in Chicago. In short term their dream became true. In 1889 they opened Hull House in the neighborhood of slums in Chicago. Hull House provided services for the poor immigrants in that

At first, Addams and Starr were only offering readings and painting slides, but the Hull-House took a turn when they realized the need for a safe child environment. A kindergarten was added to the house with 24 enrolled children and 70 on the waiting list, and a day-nursery followed soon after. But the Hull-House was not only for mothers and children. Starr offered sewing and cooking lessons for girls, while Addams ran a boy’s club. Lectures and classes on a wide range of subjects including English, citizenship and art were offered for free by social reformers, students and university teachers like Susan B. Anthony and Frank Lloyd Wright (“Hull House” 1).Soon after, Addams and Starr were joined by Julia Lathrop, a college friend and lawyer, and Florence Kelley, a member of the Socialist Labor Party. It was because of Kelley that the Hull-House became a center for social reform. She, along with Alzina Stevens and Mary Kenney, spear headed the research of the sweating trade in Chicago which lead to the passing of the Illinois Factory Act of 1893. As a result, Kelley, Stevens and Kenney were recruited by Senator John Altgeld as factory inspectors. Other working-class women interested in social reform also educated the middle-class of the Hull-House (“Hull House” 1). By 1907, the Hull-House had expanded to include 12 additional buildings, a gymnasium, a boarding school for

The garbage that would pile up on the streets, sidewalks, and alleys would not only attract flies and rodents but a disease called bred. Half the children born in the late 1880’s would die before even reaching their fifth birthday. Addams filed 700 complaints in a single summer but no one really paid attention to them. Addams was determined to do something so she applied to become the Nineteenth Ward’s garbage collector in 1894. She was rejected but in 1895 became a Nineteenth Ward Garbage Inspector instead because Mayor George Swift found her to be a thorn in his side.

Another goal of theirs was to improve city life. The Hull House wasn’t just a place where immigrants could participate in programs and learn, but it was a place where they were able to feel safe and get the support and assistance they needed to live a normal life in the large city of Chicago.

Public health was an extremely important issue that sparked reactions to the polluted water and air, the Corn Laws and the well-being of laborers in filthy conditions. “Diseases caused or aggravated by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings, prevail among the laboring classes. The annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation is greater than the loss from death or wounds in modern wars” (doc 6), “Most workers lack clothing, bed, furniture, fuel wholesome food, even potatoes! They spend from twelve to fourteen hours each day shut up in low-ceilinged rooms where with every breath of foul air they absorb fibers of cotton, wool, or particles of copper, lead or iron. They live suspended between an insufficiency of food and an excess of strong drink; they are all wizened, sickly and emaciated, their bodies thin and frail, their limbs

The movement can be traced back all the way to England in 1884, which is called the Progressive era movement and then spreading to the United States in 1886. In the early 1900’s the settlement house movement seemed to have its impact with the European immigrants living in slum dwellings. Having a basic need to improve their daily quality of life through education and health services. They were the first to benefit from the lack of welfare programs of the time. Initially the Kindergarten program was a way to attract parents to the settlement houses, but eventually evolved to improve living conditions for children. According to the Texas State Historical Association, children in the South suffered from a higher illiteracy

The Hull House was the “flagship of movement” in the late 19th century and early 20th century (Chicago Planning History). It was established in 1889 by Ellen Gates Starr and Jane Addams to help poor immigrants with many of their needs, including education. The Hull House started out small, solving small problems in its neighborhood, but soon grew bigger as more immigrants joined and sometimes even protested for causes on the government level. The Hull House helped immigrants achieve their dreams for their new lives in Chicago. When Jane Addams encountered a problem in immigrant education, it led her to explore the new concept of educating immigrants. The teachers at the Hull House exchanged knowledge with the immigrants to achieve

It is hard to imagine in the twenty first century the level of filth that was experienced in the 1830’s on a daily basis. Sanitation, public health and sewer systems were problems that gripped the nation throughout the ninetieth century (1830-1860s), encouraging popular debate and proposal of changes. The growth of population and increase in the industry

One of the first reform movements, the Social Gospel movement, spoke to those who believed that the way to heaven was to help those who were less fortunate. From the Social Gospel movement came settlement houses, which was a type of community center where the poor could receive help. There were different ways that the settlement houses helped, such as teaching English, providing nurses, cooking with what you had available, and ways for you and your family to stay healthy and avoid health hazards. Settlement houses were usually run by middle or high class women who went to college to marry well, and later just sat around, having nothing to do, and figured they may as well help the less-fortunate. The Hull House in Chicago, a settlement house, was founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.

This house was trademark precedent that granted the push for the progressive movement, because it demonstrated the passion, drive, and action that strong educated women can achieve. Adams inspired others to be included in this movement in order to reverse the systematic perception of women’s roles. Eventually, these women accomplished so many merits that through the Hull House that women even created their own occupation, social work.

Rapid Industrialization and population growth in cities created a lot of crowded settlement and ghettos with poor sanitation. To solve the problems associated with urban industrial life, American woman reformer Jane Addams founded one of the first settlement houses, Hull house, in Chicago in 1989 to provide social and educational opportunities for working class people (many of them recent European immigrants) in the surrounding neighborhood to provide social and educational opportunities for working class people who were mostly European immigrants. The nurses in settlement houses also taught hygiene and health care to the poor immigrant

In the early 19th Century the vast majority of housing for the working class was in a terrible condition, which were mainly due to overcrowding, poor ventilation and unsanitary environments. These issues lead to outbreaks of cholera on a number of occasions between the years 1813 and 1865. The Public Health Act was introduced in 1848, which required all local authorities to provide towns with hygienic sewage disposal and clean water supplies. Due to the presence of disease in slums, the Sanitary Reform Act was introduced in 1866. The act gave local authorities powers to inspect the cleanliness of homes in their district. (Naidoo and Wills, 2009). As stated by Berridge, Martin and Mold (2011), the Sanitary Reform Act aimed to address the problems with sewage, household waste and contaminated

Nowadays, in a growing number of housewives who came out of their family and became a worker, we unconsciously admitted the phenomenon that women and men are no gender differences. Under this recognition, we focused more on class equality instead of gender equality. However, in Maria Mies’s Colonization and Housewifization, she questioned about this dissertation by giving examples and facts.