CHAPTER IX
My fellow-philanthropists talked much of the “Settlement Idea.” Its adherents maintained that the world had not yet seen any self-sacrifice so beautiful as this attempt to share the lives of the poor by living among them. On the other hand, members of old, thoroughly organized, comfortable societies for doing good pronounced the new methods extremely vague.
I wished to see for myself.
Before I had visited Barnet House, the settlement of university men in Brand Street, a similar house was opened by young college women in the West End.
The Altruist went with me to Barnet House on Wednesday afternoon, when the residents always had a musicale or a reading for their friends in the neighbourhood. As we drew near the house and saw thewhite curtains and green plants in the window, shining out from among the dirt-begrimed tenements, I said to myself (my mood being severe) that it looked pretty, but sentimental. I tried to remember who had called this kind of effort to elevate the slums “a philanthropic picnic in a wilderness of sin.”
We were ushered by a tall young man into a great sunshiny room that was full of easy chairs and books and pictures.
This was one of the residents, the Altruist said in introducing him. He would doubtless be kind enough to tell me what I wished to know.
“The Settlement Idea is very simple,” said the Resident, in answer to my questions. He spoke with an air of dignity that seemed too old for him. “A number of people who wish to help the poor find a house, put it into good sanitary condition, and go to live there together, doing some independent work, and some work in common.”
“But what kind of work?” I asked.“Pardon me,—I can understand why you come, but not what you do when you get here.”
The Resident apparently did not notice the touch of discourtesy in my remark.
“The Settlement,” he said, looking hesitatingly toward the Altruist, “serves two purposes. It is a station for philanthropic work, and also a centre for social investigation.”
“What is social investigation?” I asked bluntly.
To my delight the young man laughed. “That is a quotation from an article I am writing. It sounds rather bookish, doesn’t it?”
“It is a very good sentence,—for an article,” I admitted.
“Why, you see,” said the Resident, his eyes twinkling, “social investigation means drains and foods and that kind of thing.”
“Yes?” I said inquiringly.
“And immorality and crime and amusements. Also wages and causes of populardiscontent. In fact, it embraces almost everything.”
The mingled audacity and shyness of the boy’s manner were very winning. I was becoming interested, but the Altruist looked deeply pained by this lightness of tone.
“How is this work carried on?” I asked.
“By visits,” said the Resident briefly, “and statistics.”
“You go out from here to make the visits upon the poor—”
“And then we make the statistics,” he interrupted, “and publish them.”
Suddenly he became grave, and in doing so made himself seem ten years older.
“You look sceptical,” he said. “I am myself, sometimes. But, seriously, I think that this thing is worth doing. We come because we are really interested in these people. We are interested in all kinds of ways. One man here is doing regular missionary work. Another is writing a book about the reasons for unsanitary livingin the slums, and is investigating the condition of every tenement in the East End. There’s a literary man here, looking for material. He goes around getting local colour, but he helps, too, and isn’t so useless as he might seem to be.”
“Helps in what?” I asked.
“In the collective work done by the House,” said the Resident. “We have all kinds of clubs,—literary, political, and scientific. You see, though each man is doing his own private work, we have organized effort. It isn’t all exploration. However, I believe I made our twofold object clear in that opening sentence.
“Then there are art exhibitions and lectures. We invite our neighbours to come to hear music, and to come to take baths. We charge five cents for the baths. The music is free. We have dinner parties too, and receptions. You ought to see the costumes that the East End can turn out. A Brand Street swell in his evening dress is a sight for gods and men.”
“I don’t see what you talk about,” Isaid. “Your guests must be hard to entertain.”
“Oh, we talk about dime museums and Tammany and the things that happen in the streets. That’s when we are adapting ourselves to our guests. Then we show them pictures, and talk about high art and literature. That’s when we are adapting our guests to us. It’s immensely elevating for them, immensely, just to talk with us.”
I found that my objections to the Settlement Idea were vanishing rapidly before this young man’s sense of humour.
“It really doesn’t do the people down here a great deal of harm,” he was saying, “and it does us a great deal of good.”
“Is your interest in the practical or in the theoretical side of the work?” I asked.
“In the latter. I am a student of economics, and have just taken my Ph.D. degree. Lately,” he added, flushing, “I have become a Socialist.”
The Altruist looked pleased.
“The state of things down here hasconvinced me that an entire reconstruction of our whole industrial system is the only thing that can help the poor.”
I asked him if the misery of the poor had not been much exaggerated in the sensational reform journals.
“It could not be exaggerated,” he said vehemently. “No, the half has not been told.”
As he recounted tale after tale of the sin and suffering caused by unrighteous laws of trade, I sat numb with that sense of personal hurt that one feels on first knowing that these things are true.
But the Resident stopped, for the bell rang, and a “neighbour” entered.
The other residents came in; several more guests arrived, and the Altruist, who had been unusually silent for the last fifteen minutes, became the centre of a group of listeners.
One of the callers was a Salvation Army captain, whose regiment was passing through the city. One was a street-car driver. He had half an hour off, andhad come to ask the time of a lecture to be given that night. Mrs. Milligan, the washerwoman who lived next door, ran in with her youngest boy. Then came a lady from Endicott Square, in a superb Parisian gown.
We conversed most amicably in the intervals of the music. When this was over, a domestic appeared with a tray, and the literary man made tea.
Before I left I had a few more words with the young Socialist.
“There’s no use talking,” he said earnestly. “However little direct practical good we do, there is no doubt that our opportunity is great for investigating. It is obviously better to study the working of economic laws in society itself than in books. I am trying to get acquainted with the working-people, and look at their grievances from their point of view. Socialism has been treated entirely too much from the standpoint of the scholar and the fanatic. I want to work in a more practical way, getting at the new political economy in the making.”
I came away quite willing to allow any number of young men with Ph.D. degrees, and honest enthusiasm, and a saving sense of fun, to live in the slums.
But I did not admit this to the Altruist.