As an illustration of this same
moving from the smaller to the larger, I might instance the
efforts of Miss McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement
and others in urging upon Congress the necessity for a special
investigation into the conditions of women and children in
industry because we had discovered the insuperable difficulties of
smaller investigations, notably one undertaken for the Illinois
Bureau of Labor by Mrs. Van der Vaart of Neighborhood House and by
Miss Breckinridge of the University of Chicago. This
investigation made clear that it was as impossible to detach the
girls working in the stockyards from their sisters in industry as
it was to urge special legislation on their behalf.
In the earlier years of the American Settlements, the residents
were sometimes impatient with the accepted methods of charitable
administration and hoped, through residence in an industrial
neighborhood, to discover more cooperative and advanced methods
of dealing with the problems of poverty which are so dependent
upon industrial maladjustment. But during twenty years, the
Settlements have seen the charitable people, through their very
knowledge of the poor, constantly approach nearer to those
methods formerly designated as radical. The residents, so far
from holding aloof from organized charity, find testimony,
certainly in the National Conferences, that out of the most
persistent and intelligent efforts to alleviate poverty will in
all probability arise the most significant suggestions for
eradicating poverty.
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