"f/Vhen Jane Addams opc11ed Hull- House .for Chicago's im1m:~rants, she began asking q1testions a local politician preferred not to answer SAINT JANE and the By ANNE FIROR SCOTT Powers: the boss, and not eager to quit. f Alderman .John Powers of Chicago's teeming had some hand in nearly every corrupt ordinance nineLee11Lh ward had been prescient, he might passed by the council during his years in oflice. ln a have foreseen Lrouble when two young ladies not single year, 1 895, he was Lo help to sell six important I long out of the female semin;1ry in Rockford, ciLy franchises. \\7hen the mayor vetoed Powers' meas­ Illinois, moved into a dilapidated old house on Hal­ ures, a silent but sign i fica 11 t two-thirds vote appeared sLed StreeL in Sep tern ber, 1889, and announced Lhem­ to override the veto. selves "al home" LO Lite neighbors. The ladies, however, Ray Stannard Baker, who chanced to observe Powers were nol very noisy about it, and it is doubtful if in the late nineties, recorded that he was shrewd and Powers was aware of their existence. The nineteenth silent, letting other men make the speeches and bring ward was well supplied with people already- grm1·ing upon their heads the abuse of the public. Powers was numbers of Italians, Poles, Russians, lrish, and oLher a short, swcky man, Baker said, "\\'ith a flaring gray immigrants- and two more would hardly be noticed. pompadour, a smooth-shaven face [sic], rather heavy Johnny Powers was the prototype of the ward boss features, and a resLless eye." One observer remarked who was coming to be an increasingly decisive figure that "the shadow of sympathetic gloom is always about on the American political scene. In the first place, he him. He never jokes; he has forgotten how to smile ..." was Irish. In the second, he was, in the parlance of the Starting life as a grocery clerk, Powers had run !or time, a " boodler": his vote and influence in the Chi­ the city council in i888 and joined the boodle ring cago Common Council were far from being beyond headed by Alderman Billy Whalen. vVhen v\Thalen price. As chairman of the council's finance committee died in an accident two years later, Powers moved and boss of the Cook County Democratic party he oc­ swihly to establish himself as successor. A few weeks cupied a strategic position. Those who understood the before his death Whalen had collected some thirty inner workings of Chicago politics thought that Powers thousand dollars-derived from the sale of a city fran- 12 PHOTOGRAPH FROM WALLACE KIRKLAND Miss Addams-"Saint Jane" to her followers-in the early days of H11ll-Ho11se. chise-to be divided among the parLy faithful. Pmrers lished a report for the voters on the records of the alone knew that the money \\·as in a safe in 'i\lhalcn's members of the city council. John Powers "·as de­ saloon, so he promptly offered a high price for the scribed as "recognized leader of the worst clement in furnishings of the saloon, retrieved the money, and the council ... ["·ho] has voted uniformly for bad divided it among the g:1ng- at one stroke establishing ordinances." The Leagt1e report went on to say that himself as a shre"·d operator and as one who would he had always opposed securing any return to the city play the racket fairly. for valuable franchises, and proceeded to document From this point on he was the acknowledged head the charge in detail. of the gang. Charles Yerkes, the Chicago traction ty­ To his constitt1cnts in the nineteenth ward, most coon, found in Pmrers an ideal tool for the purchase of 11·hom were getting their first initiation into Ameri­ o[ city franchises. On his aldermanic salary of three can politics, Pm1·ers turned a different face. To them, dollars a week, Powers managed to acquire two large he \ras first and List a friend. 'i\' hen there "·ere cele­ saloons of his own, a gambling establishment, a fine brations, he alw:1ys sho\\·ed up; if the celebration hap­ house, and a conspicuous collection of diamonds. pened to be a bazaar, he bought freely, murmuring vVhen he was indicted along with two other corrupt piously that it \rnuld all go to the poor. Jn times of aldermen for running a slot machine and keeping a tragedy he was literally Johnny on the spot. Jf the "common gambling house," Powers was unperturbed. family was too poor to provide the necessary carriage The three appeared before a police jt1dgc, paid each for a respectable funeral, it appeared at the doorstep other's bonds, and that was the end of that. Proof of -courtesy of Johnny Powers and charged to his stand­ their guilt was positive, but convictions were never ing account with the local undertaker. If the need was obtained. not so drastic, Powers made his presence felt with an On the same day the Municipal Voters League pub- imposing bouquet or wreath. "He has," said the Chi- 13 CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY cago Tim es-I-Iern ld, "bowed " ·ith aldermanic grief at been more different from that of John Powers. The thousands of biers." treasured daughter of a " ·e ll-to-do small-town business­ Christn1as meant literally Lons of turkeys, geese, and man from Illinois, she had been raised in an atmos­ ducks-each one handed out personally by a lllember phere o( sturdy Christian principles. of the Powers family, with good 11·ishes and no ques­ from an early age she had been an introspective tions asked. Johnny provided more fundamental aid, child concerned 11·ith justif) ing her existence. Once too, 11·hen a breadwinner was out or \\'Ork. At one in a childhood nightmare she had dreamed of being Lime he is said lo have boasted that 2,600 lllen rrolll his the only remaining person in a 11·orld desolated by ward (about one-third of the registered voters) were some disaster, facing the responsibility for rediscov­ working in one way or another for the city or Chicago. ering the principle of the wheel! At Rockford she This did not take into account those for 11·holll the shared 11·ith some or her class111alcs a determination to grateful holders of traction franchises had found a live Lo "high purpose," and decided that she would place. \\'hen election clay rolled around, the returns become a doctor in order to "help the poor." reflected the appreciation of job-holders and their After graduation she went to the \\'oman's J\Iedical rclati vcs. College or Philadelphia, but her health failed and she embarked on the grand tour or Europe customary he t"·o young ladies on Halsted Street, J<in e Ad­ among the wealthy. During a subsequent trip to Eu­ T dams and Ellen Starr, were prototypes too, but of rope in 1888, in the unlikely setting of a Spanish a very different kind of figure: they were the pioneers bull ring, an ide;i that had long been growing in her o( the social settlement, the original "social workers." mind suddenly crystalli1ed: she would rent a house They opposed everything Jolrn:1y Pcm·crs stood for. "in a part o( Lhe city 11·hne many primitive and actual Jane Addallls' m1·11 background could hardly have needs arc found, in 1d1ich young women who had been 14 IlROWN BROTHERS "I was surfJrised and overjoyed on the very first day of our search for quarters lo come upon the hospitable old house [above] ... built in £856 for ... J\fr. Clunles ]. Ilull ... The streets [Maxwell Slreel is seen at left, about I905] are inexfJressib!y dirty, the number of schools inadequate, sanitary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the /Hiving miserable and altogethei· lacking in the alle)'S and smaller streets, and the slab/es foul beyond descrijJtion. Hundreds of houses are imconnecled with the street sewer ... many /1ouses have no water sufJpiy save the f aucel in the back yard, lbere are 110 fire escajJes ... wretched conditions persist ..." -Jane Addams in Twenty Years at Hull-House t given over too exclusively to study, might restore a Miss Starr, who had taught in an exclusive girls' balance of activity along traditional lines and learn preparalory school, inaugurated a reading party for something of life from life iLseH ..." So the American young Italian won1cn wilh George Eliot's Romola as setLlement-house idea was born. She and Ellen Starr, a the first book. l\[iss Addams, becoming aware of the former classmate at the Rockford seminary who had desperate problem ol working mothers, began at once been with her in Europe, went back to Chicago to find to organize a kindergarten. They tried Russian parties a house among the victims of Lhe nineteenth cenlury's for the Russian neighbors, organized boys' clubs for fasL-growing induslrial society. the gangs on the street, and oflered to bathe all babies. The young women-Jane was twenty-nine and Ellen The neighbors were baffled, but impressed. Very soon l thirty in i 889-had no blueprint to guide them when children and grownups of all sorts and conditions were they decided lo take up residence in Mr. Hull's de­ finding Lhcir way to llull-House-to read Shakespeare cayed mansion and begin helping "the neighbors" Lo or to ask for a volunteer midwife; to learn sewing or dis­ help themselves. No school of social work had trained cuss socialism; Lo study art or to fill an empty stomach.