The settlement house movement was in the forefront of the first systematic attack on the problems of the modern industrial city and the immigrant poor who comprised the bulk of its labor force. To acquire firsthand knowledge of these problems, settlement house workers took up residence in tenement house districts. Stanton Coit, who was familiar with earlier British projects, founded the first American settlement house in 1886 on New York's Lower East Side. Soon a number of other settlement houses were established on the Lower East Side and in the tenement districts of other major American industrial cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Milwaukee. These houses drew their staffs from a reservoir of young men and women who were middle class, college educated, and socially conscious. In adopting a tenement house district as their own neighborhood, settlement house workers quickly learned that a family of ten could live and work in two unventilated rooms in a building lacking adequate toilet facilities, that children played in streets already crowded with traffic and garbage because few schools or playgrounds existed for tenement children, and that their new neighbors might never have any privacy or holiday escape from their overcrowded and polluted environment. Settlement workers were appalled by the dehumanizing conditions they met in their new neighborhoods, and soon discovered that there would be no rapid or easy solutions to the complex network causing these conditions--ignorance and apathy of the immigrant poor, their economic exploitation, and political corruption on every level from the precinct to the nation's capital. Makeshift solutions effected little radical change in the basic structure of an industrialized society, so many settlement workers began to agitate for legislative reforms, thus spurring the national reform movement later known as Progressivism.
Stanton Coit and his associates began their original investigation into slum conditions on the Lower East Side by forming the Neighborhood Guild. They surmounted initial suspicion of their motivation by appealing to the children and young adults of the neighborhood. First Coit invited young people on picnics; then he offered the use of his rooms as a meeting place for the Lily Pleasure Club, a group of eighteen-year-old boys. Under his influence the club re-oriented its goals and adopted a new name--the O.I.F. Club (Order, Improvement, Friendship)--and its membership mushroomed. In 1887 the Guild also established a kindergarten and several girls' clubs.
Concurrently, the Guild encouraged slum residents of all ages and interests to use its building as a combination town hall and meeting place. There they could gather for business or pleasure in a more dignified atmosphere than what was often the alternative--a room connected to a saloon. The Guild also encouraged collective action on common problems. The first such action, a campaign to clean up the streets and fight the power of the local political boss, failed in its immediate purposes; it did, however, imbue the neighborhood with the new attitude that organized action might result in improved living conditions. And for the first time the Neighborhood Guild received heavy publicity in the New York papers.
Following Stanton Coit's departure for England in 1892, the Neighborhood Guild reorganized as the University Settlement Society of New York City, with expanded financial backing and a more ambitious program.
At the apex of the Society's organization was a policy-making council of fifteen elected by the members to serve staggered terms of three years. The constitution set great emphasis on members being college educated; and throughout the Society's early history, faculty and graduates of the universities instrumental in founding the Society provided a constant source of advice, funds, and membership. These universities included Columbia, Yale, Harvard, City College of New York, Princeton, the United States Naval Academy, Brown, Amherst, and Johns Hopkins.
The council appointed a salaried headworker to reside in the settlement house and to supervise all its activities. The terms of the following headworkers are documented by this collection:
- J. K. Paulding, 1892
- Stanton Coit, 1892-1893
- James B. Reynolds, 1893-1901
- Robert Hunter, 1902-1903
- James H. Hamilton, 1903-1909
- Robbins Gilman, 1909-1914
- Robert A. Crosby, 1914-1917
- Jacob S. Eisinger, 1918-1926, 1928
- Walter L. Solomon, 1926-1928
- Albert J. Kennedy, 1929-1944
The headworker was assisted by about 25 residents, a small paid maintenance staff, and a constantly changing group of volunteers. Prominent among the volunteers of time and money were Felix Adler, Andrew Carnegie, Mrs. Everit Macy, Walter E. Kruesi, Herbert H. Lehman, Seth Low, Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, J. P. Morgan, Gifford Pinchot, John D. Rockfeller, and Elihu Root.
Funding of the University Settlement Society came partly from money raised by services the Society offered, such as public baths, and by socials and productions of Society clubs. The bulk of it, however, came from philanthropists and from such public campaigns as those to raise money for summer camp equipment or for a new city playground. The need for money to maintain and expand the Society's programs was a frequent topic in the headworkers' correspondence.
The Society sponsored numerous programs, services, and activities for the waves of Eastern European immigrants, many of them Jewish, settling on the Lower East Side. It provided a meeting place and director for clubs of all ages and interest groups, including labor union locals, and it sponsored a Legal Aid Society, a Penny Provident Loan Bank, a kindergarten, a library, a gymnasium, public baths, art exhibitions, music recitals, citizenship classes, lectures, plays, and a summer camp in Beacon, New York, for the children and young adults of the tenement district.
The Society also agitated for legislative reform to improve the quality of tenement life. One example was the constant effort from 1894 to 1901 to revise the Tenement House Laws, which affected both housing and health conditions. For this purpose, Society members gave countless lectures and exhibitions, and served on innumerable municipal and citizen committees.
Men and women helped in their youth by the Society often came back to assist the young people of the tenements. One of these was little Eddie Goldenburg, better known upon his return as Edward G. Robinson.
Throughout its history the University Settlement Society energetically participated in the reform movement in New York City. To improve life for its neighbors, the Society cooperated with the other settlement houses of the city in urging both the municipal government and private citizens to create a better moral and physical environment for future generations of New Yorkers.
