The young men in
the club, twenty in number, had grown much irritated by the
frivolity of the girls during their long debates, and had finally
proposed that three of the most "frivolous" be expelled. Pending a
final vote, the three culprits appealed to certain of their friends
who were members of the Hull-House Men's Club, between whom and the
debating young men the incident became the cause of a quarrel so
bitter that at length it led to a shooting. Fortunately the shot
missed fire, or it may have been true that it was "only intended
for a scare," but at any rate, we were all thoroughly frightened by
this manifestation of the hot blood which the defense of woman has
so often evoked. After many efforts to bring about a
reconciliation, the debating club of twenty young men and the
seventeen young women, who either were or pretended to be sober
minded, rented a hall a mile west of Hull-House severing their
connection with us because their ambitious and right-minded efforts
had been unappreciated, basing this on the ground that we had not
urged the expulsion of the so-called "tough" members of the Men's
Club, who had been involved in the difficulty. The seceding club
invited me to the first meeting in their new quarters that I might
present to them my version of the situation and set forth the
incident from the standpoint of Hull-House.
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