Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set

THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE MOVEMENT

THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE MOVEMENT l 1059 (1898), and His Religion and Hers: A Study in the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers (1923). For Julia Ward Howe, see Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences, 1819–1899 (1899); “The Woman’s Peace Festival—Mrs. Howe’s Address,” The Woman’s Journal 6.23 (June 5, 1875); Julia Ward Howe Diaries, August 27, 1872, Howe Family Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe and the Woman Suffrage Movement (1913, 1969); and Valarie H. Ziegler, Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe (2003). For rich materials on Fanny Fern Andrews and the American School Peace League, consult the archives of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. Citations from Jane Addams come from her Newer Ideals of Peace (1906). For the Woman’s Peace Party, see Mary Louise Degen, The History of the Woman’s Peace Party (1939). For the WILPF, see Carrie A. Foster, The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom , 1915–1946 (1996). For additional consideration of the interwar years, see Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941 (1971). Rachel Waltner Goosen’s Women against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the American Home Front, 1941–1947 (1997) is the most comprehensive study of women and conscientious objection in World War II. Quotations from Dorothy Day are from Nancy L. Roberts, “Journalism and Activism: Dorothy Day’s Response to the Cold War,” Peace & Change 2.1–2 (1987): 13–27. Citations related to SNCC and feminism are from Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979). For the definition of ecofeminism and quotations from the Women’s Pentagon Action, see Ynestra King, “If I Can’t Dance In Your Revolution, I’m Not Coming,” in Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, ed. Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King (1991). THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE MOVEMENT Eleanor J. Stebner THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE movement began in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Many women participated as it provided them a way to address a variety of concerns related to urbanization and industrialization , education and health, immigration and poverty , democracy and reform. In turn, the movement enabled women to develop leadership skills, networks, and independent living communities. Although the movement waned after the first decades of the twentieth century, many of its methods and goals became incorporated within North American institutional systems. Settlement houses often developed into neighborhood and community centers. Volunteer (or leisured) settlement workers became paid social workers. And programs organized and operated by settlements were assumed by government or public agencies. The movement contributed to the formation of the so-called modern welfare state, the professionalization of social work, and the development of the academic discipline of applied sociology. Success in addressing issues such as the need for kindergartens, city parks, housing regulations , industrial health standards, and proper garbage collection may have contributed to the movement’s own decline. Other factors, including the inability to fully support racial equality and integration in a timely fashion , also affected its viability in the post–World War I era. Settlement houses, however, continued to exist in the twenty-first century. The International Federation of Settlements and Neighbourhood Centres (IFS) is located in Toronto, Ontario, to facilitate the work of community-based, multipurpose organizations and connect houses and centers scattered throughout the world in voluntary associations. The federation is currently experiencing its fastest growth in eastern and central Europe . One of the most famous settlement houses ever founded was Hull House, located in Chicago. Opened by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, Hull House developed into a huge institution, and Addams became one of the most well known women in North America. Few other settlement houses were as large and prestigious as Hull House. Indeed, most settlement houses were small, modest, and known only within their particular communities. Many were explicitly religious, even though such houses were not officially numbered within formal settlement statistics. Furthermore, dozens of settlement houses—unlike Hull House—did not endure for decades and did not become powerful institutions . Likewise, many of the workers who staffed them did not spend their entire adult lives associated with a particular house. The movement was broader and more diverse than exemplified by Hull House and...