kindergartens, there will be need of private initiative to secure their maintenance, and Hull-House will offer one to the children of its neighborhood.

Interest in the children does not cease when they go from kindergarten to public school, from school to factory or street. The endeavor is to maintain an intimate relation with the child through the afternoon clubs, through the gymnastic, singing, sewing, and manual training classes which meet after school hours and upon a Saturday. This impels the House to maintain an unceasing campaign for more school-room, better school facilities, and better school laws. The Andrew-Jackson School with kindergarten, one of the best in the ward, opened in 1894, was built in response to an agitation which began in Hull-House; and the effort now is to secure another school-building in a part of the ward where fifty per cent of the children of compulsory school age are in half-day sessions or pent up in rented tenement-house rooms.

Children who live in rooms deserted by day and overcrowded at night, in a ward without park or public playground, are likely to become wanderers in streets and alleys, and thence to drift into police courts, charged with petty misdemeanors. A resident of Hull-House visits the neighboring police courts daily, the judges accepting her service as a voluntary probation officer. Her work among these

children has shown the vital need of a truant school in Chicago, as habitual truancy is found almost invariably to antedate a child's criminal record. The presentation of facts gathered in this work, before reform and educational clubs, has resulted in a strong movement for the establishment of such schools, and a bill for their creation is before the legislature now in session in Springfield.

When children ten and twelve years old dropped out of clubs and classes, and visits to their homes revealed that they had gone to work, in caramel factories tor ten to fourteen hours a day, as cash girls in department stores, as errand boys amid the horrors of the stock-yards, as button girls in sweatshops, Hull-House undertook to secure a statutory enactment which should check this loss of most essential school years. The mistaken plea, that a child must be allowed to work if parents are in need, had no effect with those who knew the child's parents, home, and physique, and therefore knew that the child has no physical or moral stamina with which to withstand premature work, but must inevitably be drained for life of industrial value by it. The first factory act in Illinois, that of 1893, resulted in prohibiting employment of children under fourteen years of age in factory, workshop, and sweatshop. A resident of HullHouse was made chief factory inspector, and official data gathered under her su

pervision was presented to the legislature in 1895, and again in 1897, until the childlabor provisions of the act of 1893 were extended to children employed in stores, offices, and laundries. Other provisions of this act were designed to mitigate the evils of sweatshop labor, of which there is a great deal about Hull-House, but a decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, that the hours of labor for women could not be fixed by law in this State, rendered these provisions practically void.

The labor organizations of Chicago warmly assisted in securing this legislation, and have acted with the House on many occasions. The arbitration law of Illinois was enacted as a result of an arbitration congress held in Chicago, in which

House has had a part was that for the establishment of free baths in the city, and the first one built was located a block north of the settlement. The neighborhood need of a public library station, with reading room, was demonstrated by opening one of the Hull-House buildings for use as a station. One large room, with heat and light, was given gratuitously for three years, after which the station was removed to an equally convenient point, one block west, and the library board assumed all expense. All the best forces of the ward have been engaged with HullHouse in a long battle to enforce the proper removal of the garbage of the ward. In 1893 Miss Addams made a bid for the contract for its removal, but her bid was not con

representatives of employers and of workmen participated, and Miss Addams served as secretary. In the great railroad strike of 1894, Miss Addams was one of the citizens' committee which labored with Mr. Pullman in the vain endeavor to induce him to submit to arbitration the dispute in which the strike originated. The House was headquarters for the garmentworkers strike in 1896, and is always open for trades union meetings. At the same time a free platform is offered for the discussion of all phases of the industrial question, and the lectures and debates held under the auspices of the settlement, upon a wide variety of economic and civic topics, have educative value and practical results.

Among civic movements in which Hull

sidered. She then applied for the position of garbage inspector of the ward, and received the appointment. Later the work was done by another resident of the House, who, when the garbage inspectors were placed under civil service, passed first of the applicants who took the examination. She continued to serve until, early in 1898, the department of alley inspection was abolished, and the work was placed under newly created officials known as "ward foremen." For this position she again took the civil service examination, and became eligible for appointment. There were thirty-four appointments made, but the commissioner of public works passed her over on the ground of sex. Among the temporary defeats of the House in civic matters must be counted its failure to

prevent the reëlection of an alderman of the ward against whom it has twice led an organized opposition. This is the more regretted by the residents because they cannot feel that defeat releases them from the unpleasant duty of renewing the attempt.

Several interesting and valuable investigations of an official character have been conducted from Hull-House. In 1892 there was an investigation of the sweating system, for the State Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1893, when the Department of Labor at Washington conducted an investigation of "The Slums of Great Cities," the work in Chicago was directed by a resident. Three investigations have been conducted in the ward for the Department of Agriculture: one, in 1893, a general dietary investigation; one with special reference to the dietary of the Italian colony, in 1896-97; and one of milk sold in the ward, 1897-98. In 1896 an investigation of the saloons of the ward was made for the "Committee of Fifty on the Liquor Problem."

With all its growing ugliness, its loss of breathing spaces, its decaying houses, the neighborhood of Hull-House has not become "a slum," in the popular understanding of that term. Every crowded tenement-house section of a great city shelters its proportion of the vicious, has its ratio of startling and petty crimes, and the district about Hull-House is not an

WOMEN'S CLUB ROOM

exception. Yet it is, on the whole, a lawabiding, workingman's district, and not a refuge for the criminal classes. The men are mainly unskilled laborers; unable, for racial and other reasons, to organize to secure better wages and conditions of work. In industrial crises they are the first laid off, the last put to work, and they are always poorly paid. Day labor for the city and for railroad companies, peddling, and work at the sweated trades, are the unsatisfactory occupations followed by most of the people who live to the east of the House. Those to the west, with command of English and with better trades, are not so often in financial distress.

There is, however, much extreme poverty within visiting distance of Hull-House, and the question of the amount of relief work the settlement should do is a debatable one. If a settlement become a recognized centre for distribution of charity, it tends to drive away the sensitively self-respecting who have no need of that form of help, and who confuse the social and educational opportunities the House offers with its almsgiving. The Associated Charities of Chicago has its westside bureau about one mile north of HullHouse, and a resident serves on its decision committee, while Miss Addams is on its executive committee. Another resident is filling a second term as member of the Commission of Public Charities

of Illinois, a body appointed by the governor and serving without compensation. During the great out-ofwork emergency of January, 1897, food, fuel, clothing, and several thousand dollars in money were distributed from the House, but, as far as possible, all applications for relief are referred to the various organized charities. Yet a friend's need cannot be lightly passed along to any organization; to give financial aid to a neighbor is as natural as to give counsel; and the lending of a dollar should no more demoralize lender or borrower than the lending of a book or picture. On the whole, the administration of relief is

one of the perplexing problems concerning which the settlement exercises the right to be inconsistent.

Educational and social matters interlock at Hull-House in the most natural way. Receptions to class members and their friends constitute a feature of each winter's entertainment; while every club has its literary programme, its lecture evening, as well as its entertainments. Club discipline is in itself educational to young people who make their own rules of government and choose their own officers; and, although a director meets with each club, the duty of the director is mainly to see that the club lives up to its own standard. A purely social evening may not be the club programme more than once in a month, but Hull-House exercises no more useful neighborhood function than this, that its doors are open for such wholesome pleasure, in a ward without other entertainment than those afforded by dancehall, cheap theatre, and saloon.

A club which has given unflagging assistance in every undertaking of the settlement is the Hull-House Women's Club, which was organized in 1892, and has now one hundred and sixty members. The club programme consists of two afternoon lectures, one afternoon for papers by members, and one for entertaining, with music and refreshments. The guests on social day are usually women's clubs from other settlements, and the club sends delegates to the Cook County League of Women's Clubs, the Illinois Federation, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. There

is a standing committee on vacation schools, another on enforcement of the compulsory school law, and special committees are frequently appointed to represent the club in civic and educational affairs. The members have given an autotype of Millet's "Knitting Shepherdess" to the nearest public school, have contributed to the vacation school fund, and kindred enterprises.

The children's clubs are directed by kindergarten teachers, and are devoted to story-telling and story-reading, sewing and embroidery, wood-carving and sloyd, and nature study, with kindergarten songs and games interspersed.

The evening classes are for adults, and are not intended to take the place of the evening public school. In the advanced classes German, Latin, French, and Italian are taught; algebra, geometry and trigonometry, psychology, anatomy, physiology and hygiene. There are two evening classes in drawing, and a painting class on Saturday afternoons. For young men and women who are acquiring their first knowledge of English, there are lessons. four nights in the week, in reading, grammar, and letter-writing. Composition, theme-work, arithmetic, physical and political geography are other secondary classes. There are three class-terms of ten weeks each, and the students are afforded an opportunity to spend the summer months at Rockford (Ill.) College, the trustees of that institution placing it at the service of Hull-House Summer School every year.

The members of the advanced classes are teachers, bookkeepers, and others fairly-well employed, who seek, by special study, to lift their minds out of the daily routine of work. Those in the secondary classes are usually in their first struggle for maintenance, in this country at least. These often pass to the higher studies in time, and the records of the classes show some students who have attended regularly for eight or nine years. One young lady now teaching in the public school took her first lessons at Hull-House, not so many years ago, while working in a tailor's shop. A young man of the same trade has entered a university this year, having acquired all his education in this country at Hull-House, first in classes, and then by private tutoring given by one of the gentlemen in residence.

Physical development receives careful attention in the gymnastic classes, of which there are nine each week, in charge of a director who has resided in the settlement for six years. In the fall and winter dancing classes are taught on two evenings of the week, a golden opportunity for the inculcation of that knowledge of small courtesies the teaching of which under any other guise might be resented. In the technical classes there are five evenings' work in manual training: instruction in joinery, making of small articles, carving, and general cabinet work. Mechanical

drawing and design, clay modelling, Venetian ironwork, embroidery, millinery, dressmaking, plain sewing, and cooking are also taught. As an illustration of substantial good arising from opportunities here afforded, the story might be told of one young lad who has become proficient and self-supporting in this work. He found himself at sixteen years disabled by partial paralysis, with the prospect of being dependent for life upon parents in very poor circumstances. He took up

tools for the first time in the manual training room, and in a few months was able to begin the sale of carved mirror frames and other well-executed handwork, at remunerative prices. From a despondent boy he has become a radiantly happy workman, with a joy in life and in his work that many a factory drudge of sound physique may well envy.

In addition to everything that can be classified, there are also the daily happenings which, in a settlement more than elsewhere perhaps, tend to the unexpected, and without which settlement life might become rigid. Some kindergarten children were playing in their own home a game which the mother did not understand. "That," they explained, "oh, that's playing Hull-House. How do we do it? Oh, we go to the door, and then we go to the telephone, and then we go to the door again. That's Hull-House."