The natural leader of the group was Robert A. Woods. He had
recently returned from a residence in Toynbee Hall, London, to
open Andover House in Boston, and had just issued a book, "English
Social Movements," in which he had gathered together and focused
the many forms of social endeavor preceding and contemporaneous
with the English Settlements. There were Miss Vida D. Scudder and
Miss Helena Dudley from the College Settlement Association, Miss
Julia C. Lathrop and myself from Hull-House. Some of us had
numbered our years as far as thirty, and we all carefully avoided
the extravagance of statement which characterizes youth, and yet I
doubt if anywhere on the continent that summer could have been
found a group of people more genuinely interested in social
development or more sincerely convinced that they had found a clue
by which the conditions in crowded cities might be understood and
the agencies for social betterment developed.
We were all careful to avoid saying that we had found a "life
work," perhaps with an instinctive dread of expending all our
energy in vows of constancy, as so often happens; and yet it is
interesting to note that of all the people whom I have recalled as
the enthusiasts at that little conference have remained attached to
Settlements in actual residence for longer or shorter periods each
year during the eighteen years that have elapsed since then,
although they have also been closely identified as publicists or
governmental officials with movements outside.
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