Hull House, Chicago: An Effort Toward Social

¶ … Hull House, Chicago: An Effort Toward Social Democracy" Jane Addams; 2) "The Bitter Cry Children" John Spargo; 3) "The 1908 Methodist Social Creed.

Early American Progressives' Goals and Rhetoric

The early American Progressives, whose ideology is represented by these documents, the "1908 Methodist Social Creed," John Spargo's "From the Bitter Cry of Children" and Jane Addams' "Hull House, Chicago: An Effort Toward Social Democracy," wanted to achieve better working and living conditions for the working poor. The writers of the 1908 Methodist Social Creed declare they stand for "equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life," and for a number of social justice initiatives in the labor market, including the abolition of child labor, regulation of conditions of labor for women, one day off per week, and a living wage.

The writers in these pieces identify a number of serious social problems of their day. Spargo, in "The Bitter Cry of Children," wrote an extremely sympathetic piece towards the plight of child laborers at the coalmines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Their work was extremely difficult and they did not go to school. Very young children -- Spargo writes about children as young as nine - worked in conditions that are unthinkable today, which is perhaps a testimony to some efficacy of the Progressive Movement. In his essay, Spargo put himself in the place of those children, having written, "I could not do that work and live." This helps the writer connect the life of an adult with the lives of these children at the mines.

Jane Addams, in her discussion of how the Hull House is able to help people, has given a revealing picture of the problems of the era. The Hull House worked in a detailed way with women's labor unions. Addams wrote about the formation of these unions, as well as worker strikes and negotiations between labor unions and bosses. She wrote about trying to find common ground between union members of different ethnicities, but common interests.

Jane Addams also introduced the idea that there should be a social dialogue -- the issues of the day needed to be discussed. They were debated at the Working People's Social Science Club. She wrote that if people with different ideas would listen to each other, then their points-of-view would be changed, "and at least learn tolerance and the futility of endeavoring to convince all the world of the truth of one position." This shows the Progressive's wider ranging stance than simply a movement for workers' rights. It was also a movement of changing ideas.

While the goals and aims of the movement are admirable, some of them are not even achieved today. While one would like to hope that abolishing child labor is a practical goal, children today still work in dangerous conditions. A living wage is a dream for many Americans. One noticeable thing missing in both the Methodist Creed and in Spargo's work is a practical plan for how to get people out of poverty.

The rhetoric they employ to make their arguments is sympathetic and democratic. They attempt to make the reader feel like he is one of the people who were suffering. They try not to show the work that they are doing as charity, as Addams says, regarding the work of her Hull House, "to call that effort philanthropy is to use the word unfairly and to underestimate the duties of good citizenship." In other words, she thought that the work of the Hull House was not only something to do because someone felt pity or charitable towards someone else, but rather because it was a basic responsibility of being a good citizen in a democracy. Addams' statement regarding the conflation of different people that the Hull House served is telling in her ideology of what kind of person is deserving -- she divided the "working class" from "the inefficient, the idle, and distressed." She stated explicitly that the working class are not interested in charity. According to Addams, they only want that which middle and upper class people can relate to -- the tools to help themselves.

Their rhetoric is also tinged with religiosity. The Methodist Creed is, of course, explicitly religious -- being a statement of mission and faith from a church group, but Spargo also employs religious rhetoric in order to tug at his readers' heartstrings. His own visit to the mine, reminded him of an anecdote by the British social reformer, Owen Jones. "Visiting an English coal mine one day, Owen asked a twelve-year-old if he knew God. The boy stared vacantly at his questioner: "God?" he said, "God? No, I don't. He must work in some other mine." It was hard to realize amid the danger and din and blackness of that Pennsylvania breaker that such a thing as belief in a great All-good God existed." This anecdote, not Spargo's personal experience, deliberately added as a rhetorical device, could appeal to a religious reader, and also could also not only appeal to, but also motivate a religious reader with evangelical sentiments to action. If the reader felt obliged or moved to help convert others to Christianity, the idea that improving workers labor conditions could convert more people could be a religious imperative, not simply as an act of kindness, but as a pragmatic act to gain more converts.

These writings are persuasive because of the writers' appeal to universal morals, the idea that by improving the lives of workers, that everyone's lives would be improved, and by the religious rhetoric mentioned above. At the time of these writings, this kind of religious sentiment -- an appeal to help children realize the existence of an all-good God, for example, was much more universal. To modern ears, these might sting of paternalism, the idea that society should be organized in a hierarchical way and that the better off, the fathers of society, be obliged with being responsible for and in charge of the weaker. For example, the Methodist Creed mentions regulating women's labor conditions in order to "safeguard the physical and moral health of the community." Putting women on a pedestal of needing to be protected, and representing the moral health of the community,