Question
History-
Louise de Koven Bowen was a social reformer and financial supporter of Hull-House. After Jane Addams’s death, Bowen served as president of the Hull-House Association. These are excerpts from an article she wrote about dance halls.
The dances are short—four to five minutes; the intermissions are long— fifteen to twenty minutes; thus ample opportunity is given for drinking. . . .
In these same halls obscene language is permitted, and even the girls . . . carry on indecent conversation, using much profanity, while the less sophisticated girls stand around listening, scandalized but fascinated. . . .
Many of the halls are poorly lighted. There is very little protection in case of fire. . . . A city law should be passed covering the following points: . . .
2. All dance halls should be made to comply with the regulations of the Building and Fire Departments to ensure proper sanitation and adequate fire protection. . . .
3. The sale of liquor in dance halls or in buildings connected with them should be prohibited. . . .
7. No immoral dancing or familiarity should be tolerated.
8. People under the influence of liquor or known prostitutes should not be permitted in dance halls. . . .
11. There should be an inspector of dance halls who should have in his department a corps of assistants who would regularly inspect the halls and make reports concerning them to him weekly.
Vocabulary
ample: more than enough
sophisticated: knowledgeable
profanity: indecent language
familiarity: intimacy between people
Source: “Dance Halls,” Louise de Koven Bowen, published in June 1911.
Document D: Immigrants and Their Children (Modified)
An Italian girl who has had lessons in cooking will help her mother to connect the entire family with American food and household habits. That the mother has never baked bread in Italy–only mixed it in her own house and then taken it out to the village oven–makes all the more valuable to her daughter's understanding of the complicated cooking stove. The same thing is true of the girl who learns to sew, and more than anything else, perhaps, of the girl who receives the first simple instruction in the care of little children–that skillful care which every tenement-house baby requires if he is to live through his second summer. . . .
Through civic instruction in the public schools, the Italian woman slowly becomes urbanized . . . and the habits of her entire family were modified. The public schools in the immigrant neighborhoods deserve all the praise as Americanizing agencies.
Document E: Memories of Hull House (Modified)
The following is an excerpt from Hilda Satt Polacheck’s book, I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl, which she wrote in 1953. In this excerpt she describes her memories of Hull-House from 1896.
Several days before Christmas 1896 one of my Irish playmates suggested that I go with her to a Christmas party at Hull-House. . . . I asked her if there would be any Jewish children at the party. She said that there were Jewish children at the parties every year and that no one was ever hurt...
The thought began to percolate that things might be different in America. In Poland it had not been safe for Jewish children to be on the streets on Christmas. . . .
At the party, the children of the Hull-House Music School sang some songs that I later found out were called “Christmas carols.” I shall never forget the . . . sweetness of those childish voices. All feelings of religious intolerance and bigotry faded. I could not connect this beautiful party with any hatred or superstition that existed among the people of Poland.
As I look back, I know that I became an American at this party. I was with children who had been brought here from all over the world. The fathers and mothers, like my father and mother, had come in search of a free and happy life. And we were all having a good time at a party, as the guests of an American, Jane Addams.
1. What were the attitudes of settlement house social reformers towards immigrants? Use evidence from the text and arguments from both side.
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