Settlement Houses and Their Impact on Immigrants in the 19th Century

Introduction to the Settlement House Movement

Settlement houses were an attempt at socially reforming society in the late nineteenth century. The movement associated with them was a process of helping the urban poor by adopting their modes of life — living among them and serving them directly. What today's youth would recognize as a community center, settlement houses initially sprang up in the 1880s. At these facilities, highly educated individuals would move into settlement houses and get to personally know the neighborhood and immigrant populations they were teaching, studying, and assisting. Working together, reformers passed labor laws and changed the way the United States conducted business. While these educated professionals lived with the community and served it, the main intent of the movement was ultimately to transfer responsibility for social welfare to the government in the long run.

An interesting aspect of the settlement house movement is its lasting influence on today's social work profession. Settlement house workers, by serving communities directly, not only addressed issues of poverty and social injustice but also laid the foundation of modern social work. This is why these community centers are also known as "neighborhood centers" — early social workers preferred to live in the neighborhoods of the communities they served and practice a professionalized form of social work from within.

In order to understand the importance of settlement houses in the United States, it is necessary to understand the reasons that led to their establishment and their subsequent success. Among the many concerns that animated Progressive Era American reformers in the nineteenth century, the plight of the nation's urban poor was the most pressing. Unsanitary conditions in workplaces and residences endangered both the health of those communities and the broader city population. Social discomfort was also giving rise to anti-democratic sentiments. Corrupt politicians, anarchist agitators, and self-serving labor leaders were exploiting the depressed lives of immigrants and manipulating them for political gain, which ultimately threatened American civic culture. This was why Progressives decided to move into settlement houses and facilitate the provision of health and education services along with other basic necessities. The agenda was to raise the standard of living of poor families while also preventing political instability at both the city and national level.

Origins and Early Founding of Settlement Houses

The first settlement house was Toynbee Hall in London, founded in 1883. Canon Samuel Barnett, pastor of the poorest parish in London's notorious East End, established one of the earliest settlement houses in 1884. Toynbee Hall accommodated educated and cultured individuals and made them act as mentors, teachers, and basic human services providers to the deprived social class. This settlement house attracted many young theologians and middle-class people, as it was rooted in the social gospel movement and drew in participants through religious motivation.¹ The pioneer in the American settlement house movement was The Neighborhood Guild (later the University Settlement), founded by Stanton Coit and Charles B. Stover in 1886.²

Another famous settlement house was Hull House in Chicago, established in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. Other notable institutions include Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement in New York. Additional settlement houses founded in this era include the College Settlement, a club for girls in New York City (1889, founded by Vida Dutton Scudder and Jean G. Fine); East Side House, New York (1891); Northwestern University Settlement (1891, Harriet Vittum); South End House, Boston (1892, Robert Archey Woods); and Henry Street Settlement, New York (1893, Lillian D. Wald). New settlements were established almost every year: University of Chicago Settlement, 1894 (Mary McDowell); Chicago Commons, 1894 (Graham Taylor); Hudson Guild, New York, 1897 (John Lovejoy Elliot); Hiram House, Cleveland, 1896 (George A. Bellamy); and Greenwich House, New York, 1902 (Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch).³

The world was in a state of great economic stress between the late nineteenth century and the end of World War I. During this period, the settlement house movement played a major role as a Progressive Era response to economic suffering, labor turmoil, unemployment, low wages, inequitable employment practices, and poor living conditions. Since these settlement houses provided shelter and employment assistance to large numbers of immigrants, significant flows of labor arrived at these new establishments of industrialized society every day. Immigrants were provided residences in enclaves that helped them overcome the challenges of ethnic isolation, foreign language, and unfamiliar customs.⁴

Among all settlement houses, Hull House in Chicago was the most eminent. Although it was not the first settlement house, it acted as a model for many others because of its scope and character. Hull House served as a hub of research, service, and reform that came to define the American settlement house movement. Its founders, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, moved into a poor neighborhood in Chicago where an immigrant community was concentrated. During this period, both founders studied the living and working conditions of that community thoroughly. Through their research, they observed how European immigrants were exploited, subjected to poor work environments, paid insufficient wages, denied educational opportunities, and left in compromised residential conditions due to inadequate government support. As a result of this research, Hull House offered a day nursery for children, a club for working girls, lectures and cultural programs, and meeting space for neighborhood political groups.⁵

Hull House and the Role of Women Reformers

With the support of numerous social reformers who assisted at the settlement, Jane Addams took an active role in using labor unions to fight for workers' rights. She lobbied city government and helped form the Immigrants' Protective League, which sought to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and combat the exploitation of young workers. The research wing of the settlement house also played an active role: workers examined and surveyed living conditions in homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces where migrants and immigrants were employed. The findings were widely publicized, helping to foster an atmosphere favorable to government reform and new legislation.

Under Addams's dynamic leadership, a significant cadre of women social workers and reformers emerged from Hull House. This group was influential throughout the United States. Notably, approximately three-quarters of the activists in the settlement house movement were well-educated women who were committed to liberating the poor from the consequences of poverty.⁶

These included Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, prominent figures in the U.S. Children's Bureau; Florence Kelley, a labor and consumer advocate; Alice Hamilton, physician and social activist; and Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, social researchers and key leaders in the development of social work education. In addition to these women, Mary O'Sullivan, a labor leader and reformer, organized the Chicago Women's Bindery Workers' Union in 1889 and in 1892 became the American Federation of Labor's first woman organizer. Lucy Flower helped found the Illinois Training School for Nurses, the Chicago Bureau of Charities, the Cook County Juvenile Court, the Protective Agency for Women and Children, and the Lake Geneva Fresh Air Association for poor urban children.

Although settlement houses were considered welfare organizations of a largely secular nature, many of the pioneering houses emerged from religious roots. This was the reason why faith played a major role in the success of these settlement houses, often more so than ethics and morals in the abstract.

The most prominent example of religious influence on the settlement house movement is Chicago Commons, founded in 1894 by Graham Taylor, who was himself a professor of Christian Sociology. Beyond this distinguished example, there were more than 460 settlement houses in operation by 1930, and the majority were funded and supported by churches. Of the more than 400 settlements established by 1910, 167 — more than 40% — were identified as religious: 31 Methodist, 29 Episcopal, 24 Jewish, 22 Roman Catholic, 20 Presbyterian, 10 Congregational, and 31 unspecified.⁷