Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1894 — SOCIAL REFORM. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SOCIAL REFORM.

THE UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY’S CLUB. What the People Will Do When They are Given aa Opportunity for Social and Intellectual Improvement. Alice Chittenden gives an interesting account ot her visit to the University Settlement Society in Delancey street, New York, as follows: ‘•lt is in the heart of the Tenth Ward, that great district variously known as the “Typhus,” the “Suicide” and the “Crooked” ward, where, on a single square mile, 335,000 human beings are packed; where the population is twice as dense as that of the most crowded London district, and five times as dense as that of any great city in the United States. An area where everything tempts men to vice. All this is within a mile of a part of the city where there are thousands of vacant lots. Not only do liquor shops flaunt their signs on every one of the three corners allowed by law, but often on the fourth, with numerous smaller places between where liquor is sold. Dives of the lowest kind and “coffee saloons,” where every sort of immorality is kept up until the early hours of the morning, abound, and gambling resorts are so ingeniously disguised and so innocent appearing as to deceive the very elect. The Hebrews form a large part of the population, and where they go the “sweat shop,’’with its attendant evils springs up. Against all of these evils the Neighborhood Guild and its band of devoted adherents have to contend. What are its Weapons? I discovered two of them as I stopped in front of the four-story building of Milwaukee brick, whose bright windows and neat Holland shades offer so marked a contrast to the buildings in the vicinity, to read these placards: “Gymnasium, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from Bto 10. Class instruction Wednesday evening, 8-9.30. Five cents per week.” “Pool room open every evening from Bto 10.80. Two cents per cue. Initiation for 25 cents.” As I paused, attracted by these announcements, I was soon surrounded by a crowd of happy, eager child faces. “I go to school here, and oh, ain’t it nice!” said one. “I learn to cook and to sew,” said another. So, having learned where the Guild was, I passed in to discover what it was. The first floor covers a lot 25 x 100 feet and contains two large assembly

rooms and a gymnasium. In the latter a number of little girls were practicing with such evident enthusiasm as can be felt only by those who have never known what it was to have even “elbow room” in life, not to speak of the absolutely unattainable freedom of childish gambols in fields and meadows. These children come from homes where three rooms for a large family is an almost princely abode, for many of them “home” means a single room shared by four or five. The assembly rooms, which are also used for dancing, have the walls hung with beautiful etchings loaned by the Century Company, and photographs. Many of the former are the original sketches made by their own artists of illustrations which have appeared in the magazine. Among the latter is a large and beautiful Sistine Madonna. Dancing classes are held every Saturday evening and are under the auspicies of the oldest club of the Guild, the O. I. F. (Order Improvement and Friendship). There are about 170 members, pretty equally composed of each sex. The men pay $1.75 and the women $1.25 for a course of twelve lessons, the dues paying for the dancing master at $lO per lesson and three pieces of music, Mr. James Galvin is master of ceremonies, and the circular announces that “the strictest ballroom etiquette will be observed.” The second floor contains a library and reading room and a large room used for club purposes and as a cooking school. The lavatories are also on this floor. The library contains 1,200 volumes, all of them donated. It opened in February, 1898, with twenty members, the fee being 5 cents, not a week, but for the entire year. New members were added at the rate of from 60 to 120 a month. It was suspended on the ,15 th of June, 1893, and waited to be opened until a permanent librarian could be engaged. Hundreds of applicants were also then awaiting admission. Cards of admission must be signed by some reliable person testifying to the good character of the applicant. A placard in large type advises them to “read slowly, pause frequently, keep clean and return duly with the corners of the leaves not* turned down.” The attendants made each child a special study, and instead of allowing them to choose their books at random, helped them to works on subjects specially fitted to foster the bent of each mind. It was surprising to'see tots of 10 and 11 choosing histories and biographies of statesmen. One scrap of a boy took home and read “Milman’s history of the Jews.” It is impossible to keep a United States history on the shelves. The third floor contains the rooms for clubs and classes

and pool rooms, where the three tables are all running every evening, with an average of five cues per game. If too narrow othodoxy should call this fighting the devil with his own weapons, ask yourself whether it is better that these young men, bound all the day to occupations of the most toilsome and disagreeable kind, should play a healthful, and in itself a nowise demoralizing game here or in the saloons. And why should billiards be worse for the masses than for the Four Hundred. The top floor is used exclusively by the residing workers, headed by Dr. Stanton Coit. It includes a sitting room, dining room, three bed rooms, pantry and kitchen. The halls, stairs and club room floors are bare. The top floor is covered with matting and artistic but inexpensive art rugs, and all the furniture is of the simplest description, but Ido not

think I exaggerate when I say that nine out of ten housekeepers could take a lesson here in neatness and cleanliness; the housekeepers of this establishment, be it borne in mind, are men. Such shining windows, such spotless floors, such immaculate freedom from dust I do not pretend to compass in my own simple menage. Having learned where the Neighborhood Guild is and briefly what it is, the inquiring mind next asks, “What are its aims, what it has accomplished and what are its aspirations for the future? Its object, quoting from its constitution, is “to bring men and women of education into closer relations with the laboring classes for their mutual benefit.” Being debarred by this constitution from becoming “the vehicle of any creed, religious, political or socio-economic,” its efforts to do good must rest upon deep human sympathies. In telling what the Guild is I find that I have omitted a very important branch of its work, viz.: the kindergarten. The dues are 10 cents per week, which pays for the daily luncheon of bread and milk. There are fifty-two children in the class, and mothers are fast gaining faith in the school. Fifty-two children are carrying the refining and civilizing influences of this school into their homes and are being assured of a future for themselves that shall make such homes as many of them now come from impossible. A Penny Provident Fund Bank has been opened, the 450 depositors being mostly children, some of larger growth making deposits of 25 cents or more per week. Four hundred and fifty more future homes insured against want by learning lessons of thrift and economy. It has instituted a social reform club—think of it!—in the Tenth Ward and every man and woman is invited to become a member. This is divided for active work into ten sections, with such large aspirations as the establishment of a public bath, laundry, park and playground, public lavatories, co-operative stores and sick benefit societies. It has already opened a co-oper-ative store which is being successfully run and at which pure milk and honest butter can be obtained at honest prices, for besides being the victims of every sort of adulteration of their food they are obliged, buying necessarily in small quantities, to pay most exorbitant prices. Last Fall the sale of wood was added, and those who chose to avail themselves of the opportunity offered

were enabled to purchase coal at market prices, instead of paying, as formerly, more than double. That this work, begun seven years ago, is not to be lightly dropped, the plans of the proposed building for the University Settlement Society will show. The name of Dr. Stanton Coit, the head worker of the society, whose book on “Neighborhood Guilds, an Instrument of Social Reform,” is the standard work on the subject, is a still firmer guarantee for its future. To a thorough enlightenment regarding the work it is necessary that I should mention that the only salaried workers are the matron, the secretary, the kindergarten teachers and the librarian, whom it was found necessary to employ at a salary, it having hitherto relied in its undertakings upon volunteer workers from uptown. Most of these come from the self-supporting classes. In conducting the Flower Mission this summer I was told that the most active worker was a boy of twelve. This is a pie in which every one to whose heart the good work appeals may therefore have a finger. There isademand for any numberof friendly visitors—women who will go from

house to house learning what nuisances or want of decent repairs the people have to complain of and then standing between them and the wrath of the landlord while the nuisances are removed and the repairs made, for these landlords, who get from 80 to 40 per cent, on their money, do not hesitate to set a tenant who makes an appeal for necessary repairs summarily on the street. It is time that charitable people call a halt on indiscriminate almsgiving, much of which serves only to pauperize. Free distributions of bread and soup—of anything, in fact—lead to abuses, for instances were not wanting where families took advantage of gratuitous bread distributions to collect and sell from seven to ten loaves a day. After I had gone through the Guild from the ground floor to the top story my guide said: ‘ ‘Have you ever been through this district?” Would you like an object lesson such as possibly you have never dreamed of?” Then for twenty minutes, with my heart growing heavier and heavier each moment with the weight of the world’s woe and misery, we walked through the adjacent streets, into blind alleys leading to rear yards where almost every foot of space was covered with tumbledown tenements, where God’s air and sunshine not only were not free, but where you could not purchase an inch of one or a ray of the other with love or money. There is so much to do—so many wrongs to right—the task seemed Herculean—that wondering at the buoyant hopefulness of my escort, I said, “Sir, why do you do this?” He replied, “Because I believe in the people.”—[New York Recorder.

THE POOL ROOM.

THE READING ROOM.

THE KINDERGARTEN.