After a first visit to the settlement of young women in the West End I
found myself going there very often. The gracious friendliness with
which I was met attracted me strongly, and I became more and more
interested in the social experiment.
This new house was not in the slums. It stood in one of the old city
squares, whose aristocratic inhabitants had long ago drifted away,
leaving empty rooms for the families of mechanics and poorly paid
clerks.
Life here was gray and monotonous. Into it my young girl friends had
rushed, with little knowledge of its actual conditions, but with a firm
determination to change them for the better. This kind of poverty did
not mean starvation, they said, but something worse: dearth of culture,
of beauty, of ideas.
They were all political economists of the school of Ruskin.
The residents numbered ten. Some of them were girls fresh from college;
others were women who bore marks of years of brain-work. At their head
was a slender, dignified lady, who, after ten years of academic life,
had resigned a college professorship in the classics for the sake of
closer contact with humanity.
All phases of the activity in the house soon became familiar to me.
Sometimes I found the doors stormed by crowds of eager children, waiting
the moment when the ladies should permit them to enter, that they might
deposit pennies in the bank, or take books from the library.
Once I watched a Mothers’ Meeting conducted by a fair-haired girl of
twenty-two.
I visited the boys’ clubs, and realized that the rough lads were
learning courtesy, and much besides.
Certain evenings were purely social. Then we conversed, or listened to
music, or read stories aloud. On these occasions I learned many useful
things from the “neighbours,” about house-keeping, and the bringing up
of children, and even about politics.
One shabby little woman, whose husband had marched away with an
industrial delegation to present a petition to Congress, told me that a
terrible revolution was coming in which the working-man would at last
gain his rights by means of powder and shot.
It would be hard to tell all the ways in which these young collegians
“drew nearer the People”: through medicines given out by the resident
physician in the dispensary downstairs; through presentations of Mrs.
Jarley’s wax-works, and of scenes from eighteenth century comedy;
through the lending of cook-books and of treatises on philosophy.
Once I even saw a resident taking care of a neighbour’s baby while the
mother went shopping. The young philanthropist told me, however, the
next time I saw her, that she had resolved not to dissipate her energy
in that way.
But nothing else edified me so much as the evening discussions on
problems of the day. The young women were even more eager than the men
at Barnet House to walk in step with great popular movements. Some of
them were fairly well equipped for practical economic study. Others were
collecting statistics with the most engaging ignorance.
Every week, a club devoted to the study of social science, the “William
Morris League,” met at the Settlement. On these evenings the head of the
House sat, Lady Abbess fashion, with nun and novice at her side.
And men and women from various trades-unions, cigar-makers, street-car
drivers, cotton-spinners, garment-workers, a motley group, listened to a
paper on (perhaps): “How to form Protective Unions among Under-Paid
Women.”
For the deliverance of the working-woman was the hope that lay nearest
the Settlement’s heart.
I always went away from these discussions with feelings of mingled pride
and amusement. These were strong and earnest young women, inspired by no
wish for notoriety, but eager to help and to understand.
Yet it was a queer world, where the maidens formed trades-unions, and
young men were making tea!
It was very good tea.