Death at Hull House Read online

  Alden, four years my junior, was quick witted and lithe. He had a mop of dark brown curls and bright blue eyes, but most importantly he had an engaging manner and an unquenchable curiosity about people. Somehow he always managed to charm his way into any company and he scorned the book study that I had always excelled in. He was fearless in a way I found reckless and he was undependable and irresponsible in the extreme.

  After our father’s death, Alden accepted a job in a bank managed by my mother’s brother. He was given leave from his job to bring my mother to visit me and to see the World’s Columbian Exposition this summer. It was only at the end of the trip when my mother was preparing to return that he announced his intention to give up his job and stay in Chicago. Coming on top of my own troubles it had been too much to bear but I waited until my mother’s train left to tell him what I thought. I accused him of being irresponsible and he countered that I was worse, as I had deserted them all by coming to Chicago.

  As for my own life, I knew my father would have wanted me to continue my studies. In fact, I would have been even more devastated by my expulsion if I had had to face him to explain it. Yet any embarrassment would have been a small price to pay to have him back with us again. Perhaps what was really bothering Alden was that the excursion to the gambling tent that had brought my downfall had been a plan jointly concocted by both of us. It was true that I bitterly regretted it now and, it was true that, although I had never voiced the thought, in my heart I blamed my brother.

  TWO

  Snow was falling again on the day of my departure for Hull House. There had been a heavy snowfall several days before and now an icy wind from Lake Michigan cut through every open space making exposure of any inch of skin unbearable. The cost of a rented carriage was dear but there was no other way to transport myself and my two trunks, so I counted out my money remaining for the month and set aside what was needed.

  When she left the previous week, my mother assured me I was welcome to return to her in Boston if the situation did not meet my expectations. But I knew she thought it would have been my father’s wish that I succeed. I dreaded disappointing her. Of Alden I had had no news. Our parting had been so bitter and resentful I felt stung. I was not inclined to heal the breach and thought it best to let time do the healing. I imagined that he continued his association with Mr. Marco, the man who ran the Ferris Wheel on the Midway during the Fair. My brother seemed intent on a life of random dissipation without purpose or intention, though how he proposed to accomplish this without even his meager monthly allowance was unfathomable to me. I resolved not to tell my mother of our final argument. I would omit all mention of my brother in my letters until he contacted me.

  I huddled in the carriage as we traveled north on the treacherously ice covered streets. I was numb with cold when I saw we were at Eighteenth Street but I bent forward to look out, hoping to catch a final glimpse of the Glessner house to the east on Prairie Avenue. It was through my association with the university that I had met that wealthy and generous family. I remembered the beauty of the parlor where we listened to Mrs. Glessner at her piano and Mr. Langlois on his violin. I could still picture the pearls and silks of the ladies in the glow of the dining table candles. With regret I acknowledged to myself that there was little hope that I would ever be invited to such an evening again. Not that such activities were the reason for my coming to Chicago. It was the opportunity to study at the university that I most regretted throwing away. It was the opportunity to do something important, to have an impact on the world around me, to participate in that great endeavor that would use the city as a laboratory for experiments in the study of society. The prestige and recognition that participation in that effort gave one was only an incidental advantage. That is what I believed at that time, at least.

  That impression that I was leaving all connection with Prairie Avenue behind me became fixed when we turned west on Twelfth Street and entered the crowded area filled with immigrant populations where Miss Addams had established her settlement house. It was heavy going to find a path between the streetcar track and the blackened piles of snow on the curb. At one point we were halted for some time and when I asked the driver the cause I was told a horse had fallen ahead of us. A shot rang out and when we began to move again I saw the poor animal had been dispatched, then deposited on top of the snow bank to make way.

  My heart sank as we pushed through streets thronged with men in wide brimmed hats and long beards, the women shrouded in shawls. I recognized Hebrew characters and realized we were traveling through a section of kosher butchers. It seemed strange to see the ancient language I had studied with President Harper the year before displayed on the buildings of such a modern street scene.

  Finally we turned north on Halsted and I began peering out nervously, anxious to identify the numbers on the buildings so that I would recognize the settlement when we reached it. Here every other building was a saloon and I began to feel so discouraged that I very nearly called to the driver to turn around and take me back to the station where I could board a train for Boston. But he stopped before my resolve failed me completely and I saw we were in front of a tall old house situated between an undertaking establishment and another saloon.

  With great trepidation and revulsion at the surroundings I descended and found my way to the door. When it was opened by a woman holding a gurgling infant on her left arm while she held back a rambunctious toddler with her right hand, I thought I had made a terrible mistake.

  “No, Angelica, you must stay until mama returns for you. I’m sorry, you must be Miss Cabot. I am Jane Addams. Welcome. Yes, yes this is Hull House, please come in.” She made way for me and stepped to the door to instruct the driver to put the trunks in the hallway and to invite him to partake of a hot beverage and warm himself at the coffee shop in an adjacent settlement building.

  “It’s a cold day, isn’t it? I will be with you in one moment. Angelica’s mother has gone to get her sewing work for the day and had nowhere to leave her. Angelica, you must go in to Miss Dow.”

  Miss Jane Addams was quite a short woman in a high necked dark dress with voluminous sleeves and cinched in tight at the waist. Dark hair was pulled back from her face in a simple style and she kept a pair of reading spectacles pinned to her bodice. I learned later that she often answered the door herself, like this, despite the very real fame she had acquired. It was a primary concern of hers that every visitor feel welcomed.

  We were in a high-ceilinged hallway with a steep staircase straight ahead and open doorways on either side. To the right was a large room where at least a dozen toddlers scrabbled around in play while a pretty young woman read to them from an illustrated book. She broke off and came to the door to take charge of Angelica with a smile. Meanwhile, still holding the infant, Miss Addams led me through the doorway on the left while we heard the carriage driver drop a trunk on the floor behind us. She turned back to tell him how to reach the coffee house and I surveyed the surroundings.

  This side of the house was cut up into three rooms, a small front parlor with some mahogany pieces and a desk by the front window, a darker back parlor lined with shelves of books and a small sun parlor that extended out of the south side of the house.

  “That is the octagon room,” she told me seating herself by the desk in the front parlor. “It is the center of our activity.”

  I could see there was a large case with labeled pigeonholes that must contain the residents’ personal mail and two desks and chairs with various volumes, charts and other papers piled around.

  “We are happy to have you join us, Miss Cabot. Dean Talbot has spoken so highly of you and we are always in need of another hand to help with our classes and clubs and other activities.” She settled the baby in front of her where the child could sit and play with a ruler. Perched on the desk, the infant flailed the wooden baton and it occurred to me that Miss Addams was not accustomed to caring for children. This turned out to be correct. While she demonstrated a huge
amount of concern about the well-being of children, she had little practical knowledge of their care. I never did see her personally tend to one again, which was probably all for the best. I barely restrained myself from reaching out and taking the ruler from the child before someone was harmed, but Miss Addams was proceeding to talk to me as if nothing were amiss.

  “As you can see, we tend to be very busy. I do hope you will not need a great deal of quiet for your studies.” She looked worried. “I’m afraid the last young lady from the university was very disappointed. She insisted she needed complete quiet for a certain amount of time each evening and tried to impose a rule of silence. It was quite impossible, though. You see we have classes and club meetings every evening—quite often there are several going on in different rooms. And during the day we have the kindergarten and the coffeehouse and later there are the clubs and music lessons for the older children. Will you be able to cope, do you think?”

  She appeared very worried on this point but I assured her I would not be enrolled at the university this quarter, realizing that Dean Talbot had not informed her of my expulsion. She was relieved.

  “That is all right then. And the Dean told me you would be interested in some other duties.”

  At that moment a tall, businesslike woman passed through the room to the octagon where she consulted some papers and retrieved others from a pigeonhole; then she returned to us.

  “Mrs. Florence Kelley, this is Miss Emily Cabot. Mrs. Kelley is the first Chief Inspector of Factories for the state and she is in need of another deputy. Would that suit you?”

  Even at first sight Florence Kelley was an impressive person. Taller, sturdier and more vigorous than Miss Addams, she had dark blond hair set in an elegant braid around her head. A person with little patience for vanity or pretense, she nevertheless had an air of fashion and an innate style that betrayed the fact that she had more experience of the world than most of us at Hull House. That day there was a sense of command and a certain foreignness that impressed me about her.

  She regarded me with sharp speculation. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars a year. We can discuss the details later.” It seemed she had sensed my need for money by a mere glance. She also clearly saw the potential for catastrophe in the scene before her and, without consulting Miss Addams, she gathered up the baby.

  “I am very interested in the position,” I told her. “But, can I ask, what are the duties?”

  The dark blue eyes held mine. “After a report we did to the state legislature last year concerning the terrible state of the local manufacturing conditions, Governor Altgeld appointed me chief factory inspector and authorized eleven deputy positions. As an assistant inspector you will go to these places of business, survey them as to number of workers, hours of work, pay and working conditions. You will also ensure the proprietors are aware of the regulations that apply to them and report any infractions. We investigate, Miss Cabot, then we educate legislators and the public and then we agitate for reform. All that is required is a sharp eye, a map and a sturdy pair of walking shoes. So, do you think you could do it?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. I would be grateful for the position.”

  “Good. The office is across Halsted half a block south. You can report tomorrow morning. But there is something else you can work on while you are here.” Still carrying the baby she took two strides over to the octagon room and patted a foot high stack of papers. “I understand from the Dean that you can compile the work from our survey last year for publication.”

  Miss Addams gave me a worried look as if she thought I was being imposed upon. “Oh, yes, Miss Cabot, do you think you could help us with that? We are in very great need of some help to organize it all and get it to press.”

  “Of course she can, that’s why Marion sent her,” Mrs. Kelley insisted. She thumbed the first inch of the stack. “When people learn the facts that are contained in this study, it will lead to changes. It is absolutely essential that we get this study published. When people learn the reality of the situation for the workers in this ward there is bound to be a movement to change. What people are really being paid, how they are trying to subsist, the numbers occupying each building. It is all here, and it must be made known.”

  “Dean Talbot did mention the need to bring your work to publication and she advised me to help with that. I will be very happy to do so.” I looked with curiosity at the piles of paper and maps colored with inks on the table. Mrs. Kelley patted the stack.

  “Good. Like all of us, you will have to attend to it outside your regular duties, but don’t let it fall by the wayside.” She turned to the child in her arms, bouncing her on her hip. “Now, as to this little one. Jane, I see you have been letting her run amok.” I learned later that Mrs. Kelley was the only resident who always addressed the famous Miss Addams by her first name. Florence Kelley had no patience with formality or most other things. “I’ll put her down for a nap, then be off to work.” With that, she hurried away.

  “Does Mr. Kelley also live here?” I asked when she was gone.

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Kelley is divorced. Her husband is in New York. She has two children of her own but they are presently enrolled in a boarding school north of the city.”

  I tried to conceal my shock. I had never before met a woman who was divorced and living apart from her husband and children. In the Boston society where I had grown up, a woman in such a state would lose all her connections. She would be shunned. This was a new world on the West Side of Chicago. But then it was a place where my own disgrace at being expelled from the university could also be ignored. I told myself to be grateful for that.

  THREE

  After Mrs. Kelley left like a whirlwind up the front stairs, Miss Addams explained the conditions for residents. This included a very modest fee for room and board and a probationary period of six weeks after which continued residence was dependent on a vote of the others. All of the residents held jobs or followed their own occupations in addition to helping with the house activities.

  “We have found that settlement life is not for everyone,” she explained. “The settlement is a kind of experimental effort to find solutions to the problems of society in the modern city. I know you have been studying social and economic thought, as we all have. And after study there is the need to find a way to live. So many times I have seen young girls grow sensibly lowered in vitality in the first year after they leave school. I felt it myself. We are taught to think of the improvements needed by society, then we are protected by our situation from the need or even the opportunity to do anything about it. In this way a girl loses something vital out of her life to which she is entitled. It was in reaction to this that we first established Hull House.”

  I was thinking to myself of criticisms of settlement work that I had often heard voiced by Mr. Lukas and others at the university who dismissed the movement as trivial. She continued as if she had read my thoughts.

  “Yet we hope that Hull House is not a mere pretense and travesty of the simple impulse to ‘live among the poor.’ Critics would dismiss our work as one of those unnatural attempts to undertake life through cooperative living. But it is more than that. I truly believe we can do no good cut off from the more than half of mankind that must struggle to survive. Any good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain. It is floating in midair until it is secured for all and incorporated into the common life.”

  She seemed troubled as she made this assertion and my eyes followed hers to the portrait of a heavily bearded man wearing a peasant’s costume that hung in a place of honor on a wall covered with photographs and paintings.

  “Is that Mr. Tolstoy?” I asked.

  She smiled and nodded, still looking at it as if the famous Russian author would answer her doubts even now. I saw it was inscribed to her and assumed she must have met the great man.

  “I’m afraid he would not admire our work here. He believes one ought to suffer the toil and deprivation of the poor, not just to work amo
ng them. But unlike many of our neighbors we keep ourselves well supplied with mutton and coffee.”

  “I have never supposed that by suffering as much as the poor we should therefore be better able to improve their lot,” I protested.

  She turned her stare from the portrait to my face. There was the hint of a smile. “It is true. And yet there have been experiments in communal living that might be considered purer than our own. I visited one in a Western state where the circumstances of the group were so constrained the poor who had left a nearby poorhouse to join them eventually abandoned them. They found that even the poorhouse occasionally provided pork or bacon with their grits while the communal group could not.” She stared off as if visiting the place again. “It is a curious fact that in the midst of such privations the inhabitants of that community embodied a peace of mind which comes only to him who insists upon the logic of his idea whether it is reasonable or not. I suppose it is the fanatic’s joy of seeing his own formula translated into action.”

  She smiled, yet it seemed to me she was wistful, as if she longed to be part of such a group however ill fated the experiment might turn out to be. “But I must tell you there is no one theory being expounded here, no definite set of rules. The most important quality is flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly to needs as they arise. You will find all kinds of ideas expounded here but you will see that no one is dominant. You will have to make your own decisions concerning the worthiness or otherwise of our work here. Now, let me show you the house and your room.”

  She had sensed my doubts concerning the enterprise although I had said nothing negative and I had thought to keep my suspicions concerning the goals of the settlement house buried deep in my heart. She had answered them. I knew that Hull House had become quite famous by its work, yet I still had doubts. She seemed such a well-meaning sort of person, yet so exasperatingly vague in her plans. I had spent a year doing rigorous thinking about social problems and it seemed a disappointment to be placed in a practical situation where thought about the larger context of the problems of society was subsumed in day-to-day tasks. I was sure the real work was being done at the university, not here.