The morning news., 1889-04-26
woMRN.s ToYNREE Hall
College Girls Who WlIFound Colony
in the SIums.
(oopyright Securely


faced girls and gracious young matrons Of
not many moons standing whose rather
sober eyes sofsened and frightened and
sparkled with fun over some Of Marx
Tvain's characteristic comicalitieS. The
scene was Fifth avenue drawing room,
and maids and matrons belonged to one of
the largest women's CLUBS and by odds the
most interesting in the country, that COM
prising more than ], 600 graduates from the
colleges admitting women, the association
OF Collegiate Alum1e. Women's clubs,
they say. never. meet except for purpose
and the object Of this assemblage was the
raising of money for the initial expenses of
the college settlement among the slums.
Rivington strest, do you know it,
1t runs three blocks above Grand street
and parallel 70 that great trade artery Of
the east side. 1t starts among the lumber
yards of the East river. 1t narroEs and
narroWs and the dingy brick tenement
blocks lift their grimed and gloomy walls
three stories, four: stories, five stories
high. They are not cheerful
things to see. Fronting it and its envi-
rons there are front tenements aud rear
tenements, dark uneSthetlc courts, broken
paVements, ,rickety steps and rows upon ro US
OF windows from which heads are lolling in
the broiling days OF midsummer, twenty
hours out OF the twenty four. There are
queer little basement groceries where coal
Is sold by the half scuttle and butter is
bought by tbs quarter pound. There are
children, swarms of children, bred as fast
as the rabbits in Australia.
Would you like to live there?
Its not an extreme, merely an average
tenement house district. There are women
yyhnoa hapkc hapf ot ,,ll
r%ing baby brothers, VINO earned their
bread winding bobbins and picking out bast-
ings at years old, who married at Is
years old, who were heavy-eyed, wrinkle1
and tired at 25 years old. Would you, we'll
born, well cherished, with tastes demanding
the finest and the daiutiest, in the young
flush of womanhood with all its possibili-
ties before you, would you like to make
yourself neighbor Of these other womeni
Would you breathe the air that they
. breathe, bound your horizon by the sights
of squalor which they look out on, house
yourself in one of their houses, surround
yourself with their social atm mosphere, make
their interests your interests. their lives
your life, and all to be-neighborly!
This is what some half dozen or moro of
| the younger college women are proposing,
confess that it ems to me very risky
experiment; but" says the leader of these
college maidens, lin the country you can
have neighbors, in the fine streets of the
| cities you have not any, but among the
| tenements you find the again.
TOynbee Hall, the Universities settlement
| in East London, is the model after which
| this colony of college women is to be pat
| termed. Last summer | spent two afternoons
| getting some superficial Acquaintance with
| the work and life Of the Oxford men
| among the English slums. 1t seemed to
| the only example thus far on record of the
meeting of different social classes in constant
| daily intercourse on terms likely to be help
| full to both and comprising the self-respect
| of neither. The Oxford men make them
| selves the slum-dwellers' nsighbors they go
| about their own business, they make ac-
| quaintances as it may happen, on terms OF
| perfect social equality. They organize
classes for nobody, they make no profession
| Of philanthropic designs on anybody's
peace. They make their house a pleasant
place for neighbors to drop in on them and in
simple and natural fashion-the neighbors
| themselves couldn't tell how it is accom-
| plished-everybody becomes interested in
| pleasant schemes OF a cooperative sort for
| the neighborhood's amusement, progress in
| comfort, growth in intelligence and general
| well being.
This is precisely what the American col.
| lege settlement wishes to accomplish, only
| as social evolution in every direction Is
| guided SO largely in this country by hands
! that are feminine, this Rivington street
colony will DO peopled by girls.
| There was pretry group at the lunch
hour in fashionable private school the
other day, Slight figures with fluffy hair
| smiled over glasses of milk, hovered about
| cups of bouillon fiuttered this way and tina t.
| bright with ribbons, gay with roses and
| violets in their buttonholes, chattering after
| the universal fashion of schoolgirls. The
| center or the group was young woman OF
whom, if dared, L would say she had won
| derfully winning, questioning eyes; but the
college young woman as Tule-and think
| she's right about twill forgive you some
| crimes rather than compliment or laud-
alton Of her gown. And this young woman
was Miss Jeanette Gurney Fine, who
| graduated from Smith college in the class
| of 'S3, who has combined for the last year
| or two days Of teaching with evenings OF
study Of Sociologic questions by practical
work IN the neighDorhood guilds among
the Forsyth street tenements. and who
will be the leader of the Rivington street
| colony.
Associated with her will be graduates of
| Vassar, Cornell and Syracuse universities,
and other wonen's colleges They will take
matron with them to oversee the house
keeping end of their establishment and lend
her advice in practical difficulties. They
VIII bahS Lu5ll DSb VI kiSluicS huu
| embroidery and bric-a-brac, pack their
books and their cherished art examples and
try to live, with youthful enthusiasm, up to
| high social ideal
but how viii the colonists busy them
! selves, it occurred to me to ask, so as not
TO seem to be intruding in places where
they have no concernN
All this, SO far as can be provided be-
forehand, has been thought out carefully
| and arranged.
Some of the young women will have out
side occupations taking them away from
RiVington street during the forenoon. They
will be living among the poor az the poor
live themselves regularly engaged aud de-
voting only their leisure TO the colony.
Others will be going on with courses of post
graduate or professional study. If a
woman should want TO be doctor she could
find few residence situa ions better calcu-
lated to quicken her zeal in the direction Of
household sanitation.
Was study, it was querled. business
which the tenement people would respect
and recognize!
So many of the neigh5ors will be Ger-
mans thaa books will not brand the coionists
as dudlngs. The German immigrants who
come TO this country know more or less
about the universities and are uses to stu
dent economies and bohemianisms.
And how will such a colony maintain it.
self From what quarter come the sinews
OF war.
Asids from money for establishing baths
( = No opprad IN rho xvNrnan paiph1 1nrs "A