The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-08-19
TWO WORTHY MOVEMENTS
The College Settlement and the
NeighborhoOd Guild.

The name of College Settlement is a
trifle misleading. You may join it
though you have never seen the in
side of a college. All that is needed
is some medium OF culture, a wish to
help and to comprehend your fellow
man, along with a willingness to pay
very moderate annual dues. Nor is
there discrimination against women.
Indeed, so far as the movement has
gone, have been among its
most active opponents. Its seed
thought is the old commonplace.
Example is better than precept. y
To demonstrate IL, for some four
years past men and wonen of intelli-
rence and refinement have lived
among the people of the Tenth ward.
At 95 Rivington street. in . roomy
o~ld-fashioned house, the young
wome OF the College settlement pro-
vide hot and cold baths,
a reading-room, a play yard,
and many other betterments for
the women and children round about.
Save for its spotless windows, there is
no outward sign of difference from
neighboring tenements. Within there
are big rooms, cool and clean and
home-like. Members of the settle
ment live in them three to six months
at a time. They are chary of speech
over the work. IF we talked about
our neighbors-let them think we
looked on them as subjects-we would
lose our opportunity, they say. 1t is
this element of personal consideration
that differentiates the work from
those pious and charitable ones in
which the city so abpunds. Kinder
garten classes, sewing classes, girls
clubs, mothers meetings, and social
evenings are q few of the things to
which the College Settlement has
helped those round about it. Twice
a week the small children come to
play in the back yard, which is
heaped with clean sand, and other
wise made delightful. The cost of
maintenance is met by gifts, subscrip-
lions and annual dues, in addition to
the board paid by resident members.
The Neighborhood Guild, at No.
147 Forsyth street, was begun by Mr..
Stanton Colt, sometime a worker at
Toynbee Hall. First he got rooms II
a tenement, made them clean and
comfortable, and set about winning
the confidence OF the tenement people.
1t was uphill work at first. After a
while they began coming to him with
their troubles. Then a boys club was
formed, and by his help enabled to
rent a cellar and fit it properly for
athletic sports. Clubs OF men and
women for all sorts of things followed
quickly. Other men came to live
and work with the founder. A whole
house was taken and thrown open for
the work of the guild. 1t is narrow
and forbidding, with steep stairways
and naked plaster, yet the rent is
twelve hundred a year. Space Is pre-
cious in this locality. 1t is estimated
that two thousand souls are crowded
into the block betwixt Rivington and
Delaney streets, midway OF which
the guild house stands All the hrst
floor can, upon occasion, be row
into one room. There are a piano
there, an organ, and plenty OF chairs,
stools and benches. Two kindergar-
ten classes are taught in it five days
each week. Fortnightly the dancing
class trips merrily through a night.
Clubs for girls and women meet there;
so, too, do the mems clubs, for dis
CtSSlllA LII OOl % ~ tNN
partisan politics excepted. Upstairs,
the boys room, where they battle,
smoke, play games, and go through
athletic exercises. takes up the back
OF house. In front is the council
room, where special meetings are held
and questions of policy decided. The
rest of the house is given over TO the
.housekeeper and accommodations for
resident members, who pay five dol
lars a week fol- board.
For two years past Mr.. Charles
Slower has been at the head of the
guild. Asked for results, he said:-
Il cannot say honestly that the
work has bettered the region. though
it has unquestionably helped individ-
uals. One trouble is the migratory
character of the population round
about. 1t is forever shifting, and as
soon as an individual gets a taste for
better things, he not unnaturally
goes out from this sqalor in search of
them. What it would please me to
accomplish would be so to influence
them that they would take hold of
their surroundings and try to better
them. The most hopeful thing in all
the work to me-worth all the clubs
and kindergartens and athletic con-
tests-was the way a dozen of our
young fellows at the last election saw
to the enforcement of the ballot re-
form law. We had discussed it here,
and after a fair argument, they decid-
ed that it was just and helpful. In
the ward here We have one of the
densest populations known-about
forty-three thousand souls. Three
quarters of them are Russian He
brews, who are at the beginning of
free government. They and their like
can be helped to develop honest citi-
zenship. That seems to me worth