SYMPATHY AND SCIENCE: THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT IN GARY AND INDIANAPOLIS, TO 1930 (INDIANA)

RUTH CATHERINE HUTCHINSON CROCKER, Purdue University

Abstract

Jane Addams and Hull House have dominated the historiography of the settlement movement. Hull House and a number of other settlements were spearheads of progressive reform. They fought for the rights of labor, battled municipal corruption, took stands on unpopular issues. However, the settlement movement was not confined to New York, Chicago, and Boston. There were settlement houses in all American cities. This study is less concerned with finding heroines than with defining the general nature of the settlement movement. It focuses on two medium-sized Indiana cities, Gary and Indianapolis, which present contrasts to the larger metropolitan centers and to each other. Whereas Indianapolis was a city experiencing steady growth based on a diversified economy, Gary was a "city by decree," planned and built by U.S. Steel as the site of the most modern steelworks in America. Gary resembled a company town, but in Indianapolis, political and economic power were more diffuse. Seven settlement houses thrived in these cities between 1890 and 1930, representing the humanitarian and missionary efforts of a variety of reformers. The form of this study is settlement "portraits," or case studies. The settlements are compared with each other and with the Hull House "model." In addition, several main themes are explored. One is professionalization. An attempt has been made to see whether the settlement workers' career patterns, philosophy, and methods reflect increasing professionalization. A second theme explores the settlements' goals, revealing them to be not agitation, but adaptation, and discusses how this goal was implemented. The study analyses contrasts and similarities between settlements' programs with blacks and whites, immigrants and native born, men and women. Religion forms a third theme. Unlike the pragmatic, secular, Hull House model, several of these settlements resembled missions. A final assessment of the settlements takes account of tensions inherent in early twentieth century reform: as humanitarians, settlement workers were guided by sympathy, but as professionals they were constrained to follow standard, bureaucratic procedures--to temper sympathy with science. As an embodiment of both, the settlements represented both the humanitarian and the coercive aspects of progressive era reform.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

American history

COinS