MuvvMiBmtiL lit h :MMiw^'%m^tt^ THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY H55m 1LLI2T0I8 HlSTOItlCAL Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/marymcdowellmuniOOhill MARY MCDOWELL AND MUNICIPAL HOUSEKEEPING A Symposium beltpu? tljat (Soft Ijall? tttato nf ntw blood all nations of men, and that nte are Sia rljtldrrn, brothrra and atatpra all. file are ritizens of tlje United States, and believe our If lag, stands for self-sarriftre for tlje good of all tlje people. We mant to he true ritizens of this our ritg, and mill sluim our looe for Iyer bg our morka. (#ur (Eitg daea not aak m to die for l|er melfare; stye aak a ua to live for her good, and bo to line and an to art that her government mag be pure. h.er otfirrrs honest, and energ home rnitfyin Iyer boundaries be a plare fit to grout the best kind of men and momen to rule oner her. MARY E MoDOWELL LITHOGRAPHED BY Order & Hze Wbite Lioiz, ^yyu^^ t./k-ffiyeee M/y. SPONSORS Mrs. Carl Beck Professor Robert M. Lovett Miss Roberta Burgess Mrs. John T. Mason Mr. and Mrs. Henry P. Chandler Mr. and Mrs. Henry Mead, M.D, Professor Algernon Coleman Mrs. Harry A. Millis Miss Naomi Donnelly Mrs. Robert E. Park Mrs. Clayton Eulette Dr. Herbert E. Phillips Mrs. Charles Gilkey Mr. Wilfred Reynolds Mrs. Wendell E. Green Rev. Curtis W. Reese Mrs. Harry Hart Mr. and Mrs . H . Rosenberg Mrs. Walter F. Heinemann Mrs. Lee Sturges Mrs. B. F. Langworthy Miss Lea Taylor Mrs. Emile Levy The Urban League Mrs. E. L. Lobdell Mrs. Leila Weinberg Professor Mary B. Gilson Mrs. Floyd R. Mechem Professor Arthur E. Holt Walter L. Palmer, M.D. Especial thanks are due to my friend Madeleine Wallin Sikes (Mrs. George C. Sikes) of the Chicago Woman's Club for in- valuable textual criticism of every part of the work, and to Mrs. Theodore J. Case, Chairman of the Faculty Newcomers Club of the University Settlement League, for assistance in the art layout; also to Mrs. Harry A. Millis and Mrs. Edson S. Bastin of the University of Chicago Settlement League for help in securing necessary advance subscriptions. EDITORIAL BOARD: Mr. Victor Yarros Mrs. George C. Sikes Mrs. W. W. Ramsey -iv- MARY MCDOWELL AND MUNICIPAL HOUSEKEEPING Table of Contents Page COMPILER'S PREFACE vl RESOLUTION ADOPTED BY THE CHICAGO COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES vlll INTRODUCTION By Graham Taylor x Chapter I. CITY WASTE By Mary McDowell 1 II. THE FOREIGN BORN .... By Mary McDowell 11 Foreword by Adena Miller Rich III. PREJUDICE By Mary McDowell 24 Foreword by Harriet Vittum IV. OUR PROXIES IN INDUSTRY . By Mary McDowell 39 Foreword by Agnes Nestor V. THE STRUGGLE FOR AN AMERICAN STANDARD OF LIVING ... By Mary McDowell 62 VI. MARY MCDOWELL AND CHICAGO'S "I WILL" IN HOUSING . By Elizabeth Hughes 67 VII. CHILD WELFARE . By Hasseltine Byrd Taylor 73 VIII. POLITICS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS By Mabel P. Simpson 80 IX. MARY MCDOWELL AND THE COURTS OPERATING .WITHIN CHICAGO By Grace E. Benjamin 87 X. THE POLICE AND THE SETTLEMENTS By Victor S. Yarros 95 XI. ILLINOIS WOMEN IN POLITICS By Willa B. Laird 100 XII. AFTER FORTY YEARS ... By Janet L. Ramsey 107 EPILOGUE: MARY MCDOWELL AS WE KNEW HER IN THE YARDS .... By Harold L. Swift 115 By Herbert E. Phillips 120 WHAT THE "ANGEL OF THE STOCKYARDS" MEANT TO THE CITY OUTSIDE £. THE YARDS By Caroline M. Hill 127 -V- I0047fi> 7 COMPILER'S PREFACE OF CHICAGO'S five "Maiden Aunts'—Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Mary McDowell, Margaret Haley, and Dr. Cornelia de Bey (so- called by William Hard in Everybody's Magazine in 1906) —the three who were social workers are gone. For each of these, certain memorial writings have already appeared. Jane Addams wrote My Friend, Julia Lathrop ; James Weber Linn, Miss Addams' nephew, has written a biography of the one whom he called "the greatest woman of all time , Mary McDowell has been commemorated by a thesis written by Howard E. Wil- son for the University of Chicago in 1928. This thesis, called "Mary McDowell, Neighbor," is of unusual human inter- est and charm, describing as it does the main lines of her forty years of activity back of the Yards. But of her still more is to be said. Although Miss McDowell disliked to- write, and always prefer- red talking with her neighbors to "putting them on paper," she did write parts of ten chapters towards an autobiography in the summer of 1927, while in the Julius Rosenwald's cot- tage at Ravinia. This was done at the earnest solicitation of more than one friend, and was read aloud to a small group, among whom was George Arthur, Executive Secretary, of the negro Y.M.C.A., who was enjoying the hospitality of the Rosenwald's at the same time. Mr. Arthur approved the chap- ter called "Prejudice." When Miss McDowell returned to the Settlement in the fall, she could not be induced to continue writing. Five of her ten incomplete chapters appear in this volume. It is a matter of deep regret that all could not have been included. The chapters on "City Waste," "The For- eign Born," "Prejudice," and "Our Proxies in Industry" are given in her cwn language; all but the first have Introduc- tions by other persons. Six additional chapters have been written by workers in fields opened since Miss McDowell began work at the Univer- sity of Chicago Settlement. Some of these writers are younger persons with modern social training and point of view, who have described their specialties, putting Miss McDowell into the picture where she belongs. An article called "The Religious Faith of One Social Worker" appeared in the April number of the Survey in 1928, The most distinctive of the civic activities which Miss McDowell carried on was that forced upon her by the ten dif- ferent bad smells which kept her and the members of her household awake at night during the early years; and by the procession of uncovered garbage wagons that passed her win- dows every day. 'The chapter on "City Waste, reflecting her views and experiences on this malodorous subject, is the most important in the book. Miss McDowell said that garbage disposal was a symbol of the community's life; and that that life should not be carried on for the benefit of a political party, but for the welfare of human beings. She repeatedly said that women must come to regard their city as their home, and must apply to it the standards of the home, dismissing incompetent public servants by their votes as they would discharge incompetent domestic help. The home must not end with the front doorstep. -vi- Looked at superficially, all that is left of Mary McDowell's work for the sanitary disposal of Chicago's waste is an un- used incinerator at 1146 North Branch Street, on Goose Island; another, which was never finished, at 95th Street and Stony Island Avenue; and a reduction plant at 39th and Iron Streets which is now being torn down. To all intents and purposes the city has gone back to the outmoded dump method cf waste disposal— Just as if Mary McDowell had never lived! If you ask anyone connected with the city Department of Public Works you will probably be told that the garbage is taken away and burned: But if you investigate for your- self you will see that it lies and rots in five different places: 6400 West Grand Avenue; 104th Street and Lake Calu- met; 19th Street and Lincoln Avenue; 31st Street and Cicero Avenue; Touhy Street and Central Park Avenue. After the surface of these places is slightly burned over, there re- mains at the bottom the same mixture of garbage, ashes and tin cans that is characteristic of dumps—a breeding place for flies, mosquitoes, and consequent disease. The dumps, it is true, are somewhat farther away than they were before there was a Garbage Commission and before a modern incinera- tor had been started. The garbage is taken out in covered trucks instead of uncovered wagons. Infant mortality in any one district is not so directly traceable to flies and mos- quitoes as it was back of the Yards in Mary McDowell's time. But the system as a whole is very little different. The Department of Public Works will tell you that there is no money to do any systematic city house-cleaning, or even for any thorough inspection of streets and alleys, and that this is all because people do not pay their taxes. We wonder I The daily papers occasionally come out with such editorials as "An Odorous Farce," or "Behind the Garbage Piles," call- ing attention to our "barbarically primitive methods" —the result of allowing the city's housekeeping to be done by politicians and labor bosses. But nothing effective is done about it. How long will it be before the scientific method so characteristic of modern life in other respects will be applied to the problems of Municipal Housekeeping—with the intelligence, the energy, and the democratic spirit which were Mary McDowell's gifts to her city? (iraham Taylor, whose forty years at Chicago Commons are pic- tured in his well-known book, Pioneering on Social Frontiers, has written the introduction to the volume. The epilogue was written by the Vice-Chairman of one of the great indus- tries in the Stock Yards; by a dentist who grew up as one of the Settlement boys; and by the compiler, who has been a re- sident of the University neighborhood and conversant with the work of the University Settlement for forty years.