Rima Lunin Schultz, ed.. Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of , Together With Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions. Champaign: University of Press, 2007. x + 178 pp. $50.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-252-03134-2.

Reviewed by Ruth Crocker

Published on H-SHGAPE (January, 2008)

The appearance of a new edition of Hull- tion and from professions open to their male House Maps and Papers, frst published in 1895, peers such as medicine or the ministry, women suggests the continuing fascination of scholars resident in the settlement houses engaged both in with the famous Chicago settlement house and its social research and social work (the term was founder, . It joins a number of im‐ new). The settlements served as an arena for pro‐ portant new studies of Hull-House and its reform ducing social knowledge and as centers for the re‐ circle by biographers, historians, and moral form campaigns fueled by that new knowledge.[2] philosophers.[1] This edition, the frst since the New interest by scholars in the early years of Arno Press reprint of 1970, is welcome for its American social science makes the reissue of Hull- thoughtful extended introduction by Rima Lunin House Maps and Papers particularly timely. Hull- Schultz, assistant director of the Jane Addams House Maps and Papers is clearly part of the liter‐ Hull-House Museum, and for the eight full-color ature of reform--Rima Schultz calls it "a major maps showing wage and ethnicity data accompa‐ work of sociological investigation and analysis" nying what has been described as the frst social (p. 15). It refects the Progressive belief that by survey in the United States. publishing statistics of harsh working conditions Settlement houses like Hull-House were a or bad housing social scientists would activate an new kind of institution, neither government agen‐ informed public that would demand reform. It cy, nor graduate school, nor charity, that became a was produced at a time when social scientists center of reform activism for an extraordinary could be sociologists, humanitarians, Social group of reformers, many of them college-educat‐ Gospelers, and activists, all at once. Later the ed women. They gravitated to settlement houses practitioners of this engaged social science would in this period because these institutions ofered be marginalized, as social science retreated to an opportunity for collective life and work in the university departments of sociology and political city. Barred from most positions in higher educa‐ economy, and drew the covers of objectivity and H-Net Reviews professionalism over its head.[3] Hull-House to illustrate their fndings. "But nothing else had Maps and Papers exemplifes the Progressive-era been decided. At a Residents' Meeting in August, confdence that reform begins with fact-fnding the minutes plaintively recorded the question, and publicity, a tradition that runs from Charles 'What is to go with the maps?'"[4] They decided to Booth in England to W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadel‐ add research papers by , Jane Ad‐ phia Negro (1899), to the Survey dams, , and that (1909-11) and beyond. Interestingly, Jane Addams were versions of papers given at the Chicago Con‐ made no such claim. She wrote, "The residents of gress on Social Settlements the year before. Jane Hull-House ofer these maps and papers to the Addams then titled the resulting volume Hull- public, not as exhaustive treatises, but as record‐ House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Na‐ ed observations, which may possibly be of value, tionalities and Wages in a Congested District of because they are immediate, and the result of Chicago, Together With Comments and Essays on long acquaintance" (quoted, p. 5). Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions. At Hull-House Maps and Papers was in fact an the invitation of Richard Ely, it became part of the improvised volume, the result of intersecting re‐ series, Library of Economics and Politics, pub‐ form initiatives--a U.S. Department of Labor inves‐ lished by Thomas Y. Crowell. tigation of , and an Illinois Bureau of Labor The resulting volume is a collection of papers, Statistics inquiry into sweated labor. Both em‐ uneven in length and perspective. Several of the ployed Hull-House resident expert Florence Kel‐ essays (including those on the Bohemians and the ley. In the wake of the public outcry prompted by Italians) make no mention of the maps. Hull- Jacob Riis's sensational House Maps and Papers begins with Agnes Hol‐ (1890), U.S. Commissioner of Labor Carroll D. brook's discussion of the research design and Wright had been charged by Congress to under‐ methods of the social survey and the mapping take the investigation that produced A Special In‐ project. Holbrook, a Wellesley graduate and a res‐ vestigation of the Slums of Great Cities (1893). ident since 1892 of Hull-House, had worked with Wright appointed Kelley, whose investigation of Kelley to prepare the maps. Then follows Florence labor conditions under the auspices of the Illinois Kelley's essay, "The Sweating System," a brilliant Bureau of Labor resulted in the frst legislation demonstration of fact-based advocacy. Florence regulating sweatshops in Illinois to head the Kelley and 's "Wage-Earning Chil‐ Chicago phase of this investigation. Kelley select‐ dren" is next, based on frst-hand investigation ed as the area of study ("the "), a neighbor‐ and observation. Isabel Eaton's powerful indict‐ hood of barely one-third of a square mile east of ment of work conditions among the cloak makers Hull-House in Chicago's Nineteenth Ward. For sev‐ was also included, as were two essays by Hull- eral months, investigators collected house-by- House residents who were both immigrants and house data on wages and nationalities, which they journalists, Josepha Humpal-Zeman on the Bo‐ plotted onto colored maps. They then faced the hemians, and Alessandro Mastro Valerio on Chica‐ dilemma of how to publicize them. go's Italians. Charles Zueblin's curious essay, "The Louise Knight in her new biography of Jane Chicago Ghetto," rounded out the essays on immi‐ Addams gives a sense of the improvisation that grant "colonies," a portrait of a Jewish community produced the volume. Residents had been collect‐ that was already so dispersed that the word "ghet‐ ing data on nationalities and wages in the settle‐ to" seems more about "othering" than social scien‐ ment neighborhood all spring for the Department tifc observation. (Zueblin used the term "ghetto" of Labor study, and had agreed to prepare maps despite the evidence that the Jewish community was fast dispersing; in fact, with the delay in pub‐

2 H-Net Reviews lication, the maps were rapidly becoming out of tors' academic credentials (some were frankly date).[5]. Also included is Julia Lathrop's jaun‐ amateurs), but because of their residency in the diced assessment of Cook County Charities by an neighborhood--their data was experience-based. advocate of social work professionalization; Ellen In this way the volume anticipates the pragmatist Gates Starr's "Art and Labor," and fnally Ad‐ project that Hull-House was becoming. Not only dams's "The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor did the essays present various views of the "social Movement." The volume ends with a brief and de‐ problem," they even had no common body of ceptively naïve overview by Addams of Hull- data. Nor was there an editorial voice, for the vol‐ House, an "Outline Sketch" of the settlement's pur‐ ume's authorship was a collective, "Residents of pose and its activities, illustrated with internal Hull-House, a Social Settlement." This puts it in and external photographs of the settlement build‐ contrast to Riis's How the Other Half Lives, with ings. its strong authorial voice and journalistic tone, Rima Schultz's introduction helps the reader and its undeniable voyeurism. Riis, too, used facts make sense of this rather idiosyncratic collection. to gather support for reform of conditions, pre‐ Building on the work of others, she discusses how senting them in the form of maps, tables, and of women were able to become social science ex‐ course photographs. perts and even to develop a "female dominion" in Schultz acknowledges her debt to recent work reform, simply because when they engaged with on gender and social science by Helene Silver‐ topics deemed natural for women, such as child berg, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Dorothy Ross. But health, juvenile courts, and women workers, they she also has interesting things to say of her own. spoke with authority. Hull-House Maps and Pa‐ She points out lapses in objectivity and examples pers ofers a close-up of women as practitioners of the moralism that still shaped the social sur‐ of social science.[6]. Their writings imagined an veys of this period, such as the tendency of these expanded state power that would protect women privileged observers to label immigrant commu‐ and children and end child labor. They were nities "clannish," when they should have val‐ strong advocates of organized labor, municipal orized the immigrants' ethic of cooperation and reform, regulation of sweatshops, and consumer survival (p. 113). Investigators assumed the exis‐ protection. They called for housing reform and tence of "foreign colonies" or "quarters" in the for a living wage for labor, and as experts on the city, and took them as a unit of study, even when city and labor conditions they ofered to mediate their own maps showed evidence of ethnic inter‐ in disputes between employers and labor. The mingling and upward mobility contradicting writing is powerfully efective without the sensa‐ these assumptions. Schultz discusses how the area tionalism characteristic of Riis. Here are Kelley chosen for study omitted "better areas," thus cre‐ and Stevens rebutting arguments for child labor: ating a misleading impression of lack of upward "[W]age-earning children are an unmitigated mobility. In this connection she might have cited injury to themselves, to the community upon work by Alan Mayne and Seth Koven on represen‐ which they will later be burdens, and to the trade tation by privileged observers of "slums" and which they demoralize. They learn nothing valu‐ slum-dwellers in this period.[7] able; they shorten the average of the trade life, Schultz's introduction also usefully synthe‐ and they lower the standard of living of the adults sizes some new research on Hull-House funding with whom they compete" (p. 89). and on connections between the reform commu‐ Central to this project was the insistence that nity and the elite clubwomen who formed what data were legitimate not because of the investiga‐ has been called Chicago's "women's political cul‐

3 H-Net Reviews ture." As co-editor of the excellent prize-winning on each paper. In addition the notes could have biographical volume, Women Building Chicago, used a little more editing to cut duplication and 1790-1990 (2001), Schultz has more information occasional inaccuracies (for example, Riis's book than ever about these connections. She carefully is more than "a graphic account of children," as weighs the benefts of this sponsorship against Schultz describes it on p. 2). Finally, readers who possible pressure from elite funders, and con‐ want a richer context for the Hull-House social cludes that Hull-House residents were free to en‐ survey should read this volume along with Alice gage in social experiments and to express radical O'Connor's Poverty Knowledge, a long view of the ideas. She forthrightly states that "wealthy club‐ social survey movement in the United States, and women underwrote the reform agenda at the her recent Social Science For What?, an impas‐ Hull-House" (p. 15).[8] sioned defense of engaged social research in the The introduction also includes a fascinating and in our own time. discussion of the curious photos that accompany Notes Jane Addams's appendix, "Outline Sketch Descrip‐ [1]. Victoria Bissell Brown, The Education of tive of Hull-House." There, empty rooms and exte‐ Jane Addams (: University of Pennsyl‐ rior views of buildings draw attention to the set‐ vania Press, 2004); Louise W. Knight, Citizen: Jane tlement itself, not to the mixed nationalities of Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (Chicago: working-class Chicago who were the settlement's University of Chicago Press, 2005); Jean Bethke intended clients. It makes you wonder. What if Ja‐ Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of Ameri‐ cob Riis had lived at Hull-House? What if Hull- can Democracy: A Life (New York: Basic Books, House Maps and Papers had included images of 2002). the settlement's working poor and immigrant res‐ [2]. Ruth Crocker, "Settlement Houses," in Ox‐ idents to illustrate the weight of the text docu‐ ford Companion to United States History, ed. Paul menting a vast amount of exploitation of immi‐ Boyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), grant labor and woeful lack of regulation of work 699-700. See also Crocker, "Unsettling Perspec‐ conditions that amounted to little more than slav‐ tives: The , the Rhetoric of ery? Would the American welfare state have Social History and the Search for Synthesis," in emerged that much sooner? As it was, How the Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social Other Half was a sensation, while Hull-House History, ed. Jef Cox and Shelton Stromquist (Iowa Maps and Papers, a much more authoritative doc‐ City: University of Iowa Press, 1998), 179-205. umenting of poverty but without the photographs of poor people, had a short publishing history. The [3]. Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: So‐ maps were expensive to reproduce and the pub‐ cial Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twenti‐ lisher suspended publication after only one thou‐ eth-Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton sand copies.[9]. It will be useful to have this vol‐ University Press, 2001); O'Connor, Social Science ume, long out of print, available once more. for What? Philanthropy and the Social Question in a World Turned Right Side Up (New York: Rus‐ It seems ungenerous to criticize such a useful sell Sage Foundation, 2006). See also Mary Furner, and welcome volume but this reader was put of Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Profes‐ by an editorial decision to limit notes and com‐ sionalization of American Social Science, mentary to the introduction, leaving the papers 1865-1905 (Lexington: University Press of Ken‐ themselves without reference notes. This forces tucky, 1975). the reader to go back and forth to the introduc‐ tion for background and biographical information [4]. Louise W. Knight, Citizen, 275.

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[5]. The point is made in Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Hull-House Maps and Papers: Social Science as Women's Work in the 1890s," in Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years, ed. Helene Silverberg (Princeton: Princeton Universi‐ ty Press, 1998), 146. Sklar's essay frst appeared in The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940, ed. Martin Bulmer, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Kevin Bales (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi‐ ty Press, 1991). [6]. An important discussion is Dorothy Ross, "Gendered Social Knowledge: Domestic Discourse, Jane Addams, and the Possibilities of Social Sci‐ ence," in Gender and American Social Science, 235-264. Kathryn Kish Sklar writes that, while so‐ cial science "gave women the language and ana‐ lytic tools equal to their male peers, [it also] "deepened their identifcation with female-specif‐ ic topics and issues." Sklar, "Hull-House Maps," 128. [7]. Alan Mayne, The Imagined Slum: Newspa‐ per Representation in Three Cities, 1870-1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993); Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton Universi‐ ty Press, 2004). [8]. See also Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast, eds., Women Building Chicago, 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). This edition of Hull-House Maps and Papers illustrates that the biographical essays it contains are now an essential resource for Chicago history. [9]. Sklar, "Hull-House Maps," 146.

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Citation: Ruth Crocker. Review of Schultz, Rima Lunin, ed. Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together With Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions. H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews. January, 2008.

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