Search Results for: settlement movement

Hull House as a Sociological Laboratory (1894)

The following is “Instruction in Sociology in Institutions of Learning,” a presentation by the chairman of the committee, Mr. Daniel Fulcomer, of the University of Chicago. Miss Julia C. Lathrop had been invited to speak of Hull House as a sociological laboratory.

Indians At Work (1934)

And suddenly the Navajos have been faced with a crisis which in some aspects is nothing less than a head-on collision between immediate advantages, sentiments, beliefs, affections and previously accepted preachments, as one colliding mass, and physical and statistical facts as the other….The crisis consists in the fact that the soil of the Navajo reservation is hurriedly being washed away into the Colorado river. The collision consists in the fact that the entire complex and momentum of Navajo life must be radically and swiftly changed to a new direction and in part must be totally reversed. …And the changes must be made—if made at all—through the choice of the Navajos themselves; a choice requiring to be renewed through months and years, with increasing sacrifices for necessarily remote and hypothetical returns, and with a hundred difficult technical applications.

Tammanyizing of a Civilization (1909)

The oldest and most infamous organization in America for exploiting this population is Tammany Hall of New York, which the great classic historian, Professor Guglielmo Ferrero, recently compared to the very similar organizations that were formed for exploiting the city of Rome during its decadence. For fifty years and more this body has perverted civilization in New York, using the great politically untrained population for this purpose. Its political saloon-keepers have killed unnumbered multitudes of these people through excessive drinking; its political procurers have sold the bodies of their daughters; its contractors and street-railway magnates have crowded them into the deadly tenement districts by defrauding them of their rights of cheap and decent transportation; and its sanitary officials have continuously murdered a high percentage of the poor by their sale of the right to continue fatal and filthy conditions in these tenement districts, contrary to law. Meantime they have kept control of the population they have exploited by their cunning distribution of wages and charity.

McDowell, Mary

Mary McDowell (1854 – 1936): Founder of the University of Chicago Settlement House and Co-Founder of the National Women’s Trade Union League Editor’s Note: This entry is a composite of information about Mary McDowell. The name of the author is unknown; however, many of the quotes are attributed to individuals who knew her or…

That “One Third of a Nation” (1940)

Article by Edith Elmer Wood, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. “Equal opportunity which lies at the heart of democracy implies for every man, woman and child at least a sporting chance to attain health, decency and a normal family life. It was because the cards were stacked against a third of the nation that there had to be a new deal in housing.”

Housing and Politics (1940)

Article written by Charles Abrams, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. “Low rent housing, resettlement, rural relief, soil conservation and reclamation, all these stand at the political crossroads today. The next few months may be decisive. What chance is there that public sentiment can lift these measures from their present position as experiments and stop-gaps into a realistic and adequate long range program?”

The Detroit Strike (1933)

Article by Samuel Romer, The Nation, 1933. “…There were only about 450 men working in the plant then–but every one of them put away his tools and walked out. So began the first major labor struggle in Detroit since the period immediately following the war.”

Ovington, Mary White

Mary White Ovington (1865–1951), was a social worker and writer. A white socialist, she was a principal NAACP founder and officer for almost forty years.

Suffrage in the South Part II: The One Party System

In a sequel to his study of the poll tax, this young southern writer further analyzes democracy in Dixie. His findings and his conclusions, carefully checked by southern researchers, are especially significant in this year of national elections.

Suffrage in the South: The Poll Tax

In the South, two thirds of the voting population are barred from the polls by a head tax which is a prerequisite to voting. What this “one third democracy for one sixth of the nation” means to the Democratic party, to the nation, and to the issues of the 1940 elections are revealed in the staggering facts and figures here presented in the first of two articles by a young southern writer.