The dozens of younger children who from the first came to Hull-
House were organized into groups which were not quite classes and
not quite clubs. The value of these groups consisted almost
entirely in arousing a higher imagination and in giving the
children the opportunity which they could not have in the crowded
schools, for initiative and for independent social relationships.
The public schools then contained little hand work of any sort,
so that naturally any instruction which we provided for the
children took the direction of this supplementary work. But it
required a constant effort that the pressure of poverty itself
should not defeat the educational aim. The Italian girls in the
sewing classes would count the day lost when they could not carry
home a garment, and the insistence that it should be neatly made
seemed a super-refinement to those in dire need of clothing.
As these clubs have been continued during the twenty years they
have developed classes in the many forms of handicraft which the
newer education is so rapidly adapting for the delight of
children; but they still keep their essentially social character
and still minister to that large number of children who leave
school the very week they are fourteen years old, only too eager
to close the schoolroom door forever on a tiresome task that is
at last well over.
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