The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-16
The WomAn's College Settlement
  lane A.ddamC

any In Chicago, or perhaps the wicked ness was result of the overpopulation In the toughest part of the locality was an old house which had been great | mansion once. It had a wide hall In the center. with large rooms on each side of it. In It's prime 1t was the residence of a man named Hull. After his time 1t de- generated into an auction house Finally 1t fell as an inheritance to lady, who gave Jane Addams and Miss Starr the f use of 1t rent free from 1889 till 1893. The two friends had the old Hull
 house scrubbed and repaired from top to bottom. They were well to do wo- men. both, and there in the old mansion
 in the slummiest portion of Chicago they went to live and by word and work to help the poorest specimens of the white mans civilization, If civilization that can be called which evolves such samples. At any rate. there in the notorious Nineteenth ward. Chicago. in 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Starr opened the first women's college settlement in America, and there Jane Addams has lived ever
 since. She has lived to see her scheme
 broaden. even locally a hundredfold. A library clubroom, industrial museum,
 amusement halis ciass-rooms alike for cookery and science, factories even, have gathered around that old Hull house in
 which Jane Addams dedicated her life to | humanity A gentleman In Chicago wrote os her recently, "Of all the women of this section Miss Addams stands pre- eminently to the fore" If she cared at all for 1t she would know she had lived and wrought till her name is quoted on both sides of the Atlantic as that of 'one of the great
 women of her time" Seeing how deep lxy he had at hn of ha Nineteenth warders, the municipal gov | ernment of Chicago appointed her in spector of street cleaning in her neigh | borhood. She accepted the post. this | f-ail woman who had not been strong erough to study for the medical profes-
 sion. and entered on her new duties with | alacrity. Up at sunrise, she made per-
 sonal Inspection of all the foul streets
 and garbage laden alleys in her allotted | district She appointed as her first as- sistant in street cleaning work Miss
 Amanda c. Williams, a graduate of the | University of Wisconsin: as her second | another young lady. Miss Julia c. La- | throp.
 l The college women street and garbage
 inspectors found that so long as the | householders in the nelghborhood will per
 sist in throwing old shoes, dead cats, fish heads and sardine boxes into the pub
 llc highways, so long as the owners of
 horses continue to make alleyways the dumping ground for stable refuse, just
 so long will the maintenance of cleanli-
 ness In the streets be a matter of diff cIiity.
 | Meantime the able and beloved founder
 of womans first college settlement in l America has also lived to see similar set
 dement's in every large city in the land.
 Tn the beginning she expressed the hope
 that here might be a field of usefulness for the vast number of girls coming out
 of colleges who not having enough to do
 to interest them warmly In life, grow
 weary and discontented. Tn working for their brothers and sisters who are less
 fortunate Jane Addams believed they
 would find happiness. Her hopes in this | respect have been fully realized
 Miss Addams is radical reformer and pure social democrat. She believes in
 that true democracy where none shall be
 kept down by circumstance and all shall
 have equal and full opportunity to de- velop the best that :s in them.
 Margaret Halpin.