Document A (ORIGINAL)
“One
Sunday night at twelve o'clock I had occasion to go into a large public dance
hall. As I was standing by the rail looking for the girl I had come to find, a
young man approached me and quite simply asked me to introduce him to some
"nice girl," saying that he did not know any one there. On my
replying that a public dance hall was not the best place in which to look for a
nice girl, he said: "But I don't know any other place where there is a
chance to meet any kind of a girl. I'm awfully lonesome since I came to
Chicago." And then he added rather defiantly: "Some nice girls do
come here! It's one of the best halls in town."….
The
public dance halls filled with frivolous and irresponsible young people in a
feverish search for pleasure, are but a sorry substitute for the old dances on
the village green in which all of the older people of the village participated.
Chaperonage was not then a social duty but natural and inevitable, and the
whole courtship period was guarded by the conventions and restraint which were
taken as a matter of course and had developed through years of publicity and
simple propriety….
Let
us know the modern city in its weakness and wickedness, and then seek to
rectify and purify it until it shall be free at least from the grosser
temptations which now beset the young people who are living in its tenement
houses and working in its factories.”
Source: Excerpt
from Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909.
Document B
(ORIGINAL)
The dances are short--four
to five minutes; the intermissions are long--fifteen to twenty minutes; thus
ample opportunity is given for drinking....
In these same halls
obscene language is permitted, and even the girls among the habitues carry on
indecent conversation, using much profanity, while the less sophisticated girls
stand around listening, scandalized but fascinated….
Many of the halls are
poorly lighted--172 belong to this class.
There is very little protection in case of fire....
A city ordinance should be
enacted covering the following points:
...2. All dance halls should be made to
comply with the regulations of the Building and Fire Departments so as to
insure proper sanitation and adequate fire protection. By this means many small and poorly
built halls would be forced out of business because they could not pass
inspection.
3. The sale of liquors in dance halls or
in buildings connected with them should be prohibited....
7. No immoral dancing or familiarity
should be tolerated.
8. People under the influence of liquor or
known prostitutes should not be permitted in dance halls….
11. There should be an inspector of dance
halls who should have in his department a corps of assistants who would
regularly inspect the dance halls and make reports concerning them to him
weekly.
Source: Excerpts from an article by a Progressive social reformer,
Louise de Koven Bowen, called “Dance Halls,” published in June 1911.
Document C (ORIGINAL)
[A]n
Italian girl who has had lessons in cooking at the public school will help her
mother to connect the entire family with American food and household habits.
That the mother has never baked bread in Italy–only mixed it in her own house
and then taken it out to the village oven–makes all the more valuable her daughter's
understanding of the complicated cooking stove. The same thing is true of the
girl who learns to sew in the public school, and more than
anything else, perhaps, of the girl who receives the first simple instruction
in the care of little children–that skillful care which every tenement-house
baby requires if he is to be pulled through his second summer….
Thus
through civic instruction in the public schools, the Italian woman slowly
became urbanized in the sense in which the word was used by her own Latin
ancestors, and thus the habits of her entire family were modified. The public
schools in the immigrant colonies deserve all the praise as Americanizing
agencies which can be bestowed upon them, and there is little doubt that the
fast-changing curriculum in the direction of the vacation-school
experiments will react more directly upon such households.
Source: Excerpt
from Jane Addams’ book, Twenty Years at Hull-House, (1910). This
passage comes from a chapter called "Immigrants
and Their Children.”
Document D (ORIGINAL)
Several days before
Christmas 1896 one of my Irish playmates suggested that I go with her to a
Christmas party at Hull-House….
I then asked her if there
would be any Jewish children at the party. She assured me that there had been Jewish children at the
parties every year and that no one was ever hurt….
The thought began to
percolate through my head that things might be different in America. In Poland
it had not been safe for Jewish children to be on the streets on Christmas....
The children of the
Hull-House Music School then sang some songs, that I later found out were
called "Christmas carols." I shall never forget the caressing
sweetness of those childish voices. All feelings of religious intolerance and
bigotry faded. I could not connect this beautiful party with any hatred or
superstition that existed among the people of Poland.
As
I look back, I know that I became a staunch American at this party. I was with
children who had been brought here from all over the world. I was with children who had been
brought here from all over the world. The fathers and mothers, like my father
and mother, had come in search of a free and happy life. And we were all having a good time at a
party, as the guests of an American, Jane Addams.
Source: The document below was written by Hilda
Satt Polacheck in the 1950s, in her book I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl. She tells about her
memories of Hull House from 1896.
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