The Henry Street Settlement House: Women
Settlement House Workers Create a
Community of Reform

A shy and frightened young girl appeared in the doorway of
a weekly home -nursing class for women on Manhattan's
Lower East Side. The teacher beckoned her to come
forward. Tugging on the teacher's skirt, the girl pleaded in
broken English for the teacher to come home with her.
"Mother," "baby," "blood," she kept repeating. The teacher
gathered up the sheets that were part of the interrupted
lesson in bed making. The two hurried through narrow,
garbage -strewn, foul-smelling streets, then groped their way
up a pitch-dark, rickety staircase. They reached a cramped,
two-room apartment occupied by an immigrant family of
seven and several boarders. There, in a vermin-infested bed,
encrusted with dried blood, lay a mother and her newborn
baby. The mother had been abandoned by a doctor because
she could not afford his fee.

Years later, Lillian Wald recalled this scene as her baptism
by fire and the turning point in her life. Born in 1867, Wald
enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a middle-class, German
Jewish family in Rochester. Despite her parents' objections,
she moved to New York City to become a professional
nurse. Wald resented the disdainful treatment nurses
received from doctors, and she was horrified by the
inhumane conditions she witnessed in her job at a juvenile
asylum. She was determined to find a way of caring for the
sick more directly, in their neighborhoods and in their
homes. Along with her nursing school classmate Mary
Brewster, Wald rented a fifth-floor walk-up apartment on
the Lower East Side and established a visiting nurse service.
The two women offered professional care in the home to
hundreds of families for a nominal fee of ten to twenty-five
cents. They also offered each family they visited
information on basic health care, sanitation, and disease
prevention. In 1895, philanthropist Jacob Schiff generously
donated a red brick Georgian house on Henry Street as a
new base of operation.

The Henry Street Settlement stood in the center of the most
overcrowded and cosmopolitan neighborhood in America,
New York's Lower East Side. Roughly 500,000 people
were packed into an area only as large as a midsize Kansas
farm. Population density was about 500 per acre; a single
city block might have as many as 3,000 residents. Home for
most Lower East Siders was a small tenement apartment
that might include paying boarders squeezed in alongside the
immediate family. The vast majority of residents were
recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe: Jews,
Italians, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Slavs. Men,
women, and children toiled in the garment shops, small
factories, retail stores, breweries, and warehouses to be
found on nearly every street. A highly organized,
Irish-dominated political machine controlled local political
affairs.

The Henry Street Settlement became a model for a new
kind of reform community. It was essentially a community
of college-educated women who encouraged and supported
one another in a wide variety of humanitarian, civic,
political, and cultural activities. As a living arrangement,
settlement houses closely resembled the dormitory
atmosphere found at such new women's colleges as Smith,
Wellesley, and Vassar. Like these colleges, the settlement
house was an "experiment," but one designed, in Jane
Addams' words, "to aid in the solution of the social and
industrial problems which are engendered by the modern
conditions of urban life." Unlike earlier moral reformers who
tried to impose their ideas from outside the neighborhood,
settlement house residents were committed to living in the
midst of poor neighborhoods and working for immediate
improvements in the health and welfare of the community.
Yet as Addams and others repeatedly stressed, the
college-educated women were beneficiaries as well. The
settlement house allowed them to preserve a collegial spirit,
satisfy the desire for service, and apply their academic
training.

A self-sufficient institution serving as a moral and social
center for both its occupants and the surrounding
neighborhood, the settlement house became the focus of a
movement attracting large numbers of educated young
women. In 1891 there were six settlements in the United
States, in 1897 there were 74, by 1900 more than 200, and
by 1910 more than 400. Few made settlement work a
career; the average stay was less than five years. Roughly
half eventually married. But those who did make a career of
this work typically chose not to marry, and most lived
together with female companions. As the settlements
flourished, the residents described their neighbors in
countless articles and lectures, which helped build sympathy
for the plight of the poor and fostered respect for different
cultural heritages. Settlement houses also transformed their
leading residents, such as Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and
Florence Kelley, into influential political figures during the
progressive era. Wald attracted a dedicated group of nurses,
educators, and reformers to live at the Henry Street
Settlement. By 1909 Henry Street had more than forty
residents, supported by the donations of well-to-do New
Yorkers. In addition to the nursing service, Wald and her
allies convinced the New York Board of Health to assign a
nurse to every public school in the city. They lobbied the
Board of Education to create the first school lunch
programs. They persuaded the city to set up municipal milk
stations to ensure the purity of milk. Henry Street also
pioneered tuberculosis treatment and prevention. Its leaders
became powerful advocates for playground construction,
improved street cleaning, an d tougher housing inspection.
The settlement's Neighborhood Playhouse became an
internationally acclaimed center for innovative theater,
music, and dance.

As settlement house workers expanded their influence from
local neighborhoods to larger political and social circles, they
became, in the phrase of one historian, spearheads for
reform. Lillian Wald became a national figure--an outspoken
advocate of child labor legislation and woman suffrage and a
vigorous opponent of American involvement in World War
I. She offered Henry Street as a meeting place to the
National Negro Conference in 1909, out of which emerged
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. It was no cliché for Wald to say, as she did on
many occasions, "The whole world is my neighborhood."

Vigilante Justice in Bisbee, Arizona

Early in the morning of July 12, 1917, Mrs. John Conner,
proprietor of a miners' boardinghouse in Bisbee, Arizona, faced a
violent disruption of her normal morning routine. A group of
armed men, wearing white armbands, pounded on her door and
then entered the house. They demanded that miners sitting around
the breakfast table come with them. Flinging her arms out wide,
Mrs. Conner angrily told the intruders they had no right to enter
her home or go into her private bedroom. One gunman struck the
woman in the stomach and informed her that he had the right to
go anywhere he pleased. The gunmen invading Mrs. Conner's
home were part of an organized group of armed vigilantes who
swept through the town that morning seizing men in their homes,
on the street, and in restaurants and stores. A bitter strike by
miners had crippled Bisbee's booming copper industry for two
weeks, and the deputies were determined to break it. America's
entry into the European war in April 1917 pushed the price of
copper to an all-time high. The Phelps-Dodge Company was
determined to take advantage of this windfall with expanded
production. Miners viewed the increased demand for labor as an
opportunity to flex their own muscle and improve wages and
working conditions. The vigilantes asked all the men they could
find that day if they were working or willing to work. Those who
answered no were herded into Bisbee's downtown plaza, where two
machine guns commanded the scene. From the plaza, deputies
marched more than 2,000 prisoners to the local baseball park.
There, mine managers gave striking miners one last chance to
return to work. After many agreed and were released, the
remaining 1,400 men were forced at gunpoint onto a freight train.
Carrying minimal supplies of water and bread, the train then took
the men 173 miles east to Columbus, New Mexico, and
unceremoniously dumped them into the desert. The deportees
found temporary refuge at an army camp where they languished
for two months. Only a few ever returned to their Bisbee homes.

The Bisbee deportation occurred against a complex backdrop of
America's recent entry into the European war, a corporate drive
for increased profits, growing labor militancy, and western
traditions of rough frontier justice. Outbreaks of vigilantism
would divide many American communities for the duration of the
war. The reasons these acts of violence and coercion varied: for
not displaying a flag, for failing to buy war bonds, for criticizing
the draft, for alleged spying, for any behavior that might appear
"disloyal." In western communities like Bisbee, vigilantes used the
super-patriotic mood to settle scores with labor organizers and
radicals.

Arizona, which had just recently achieved statehood in 1912, was
the leading producer of copper in the United States. With a
population of 8,000, Bisbee lay in the heart of the state's richest
mining district. The giant Phelps-Dodge Company dominated the
region's copper industry as well as its political and social life. It
owned the town's hospital, department store, newspaper, library,
and the largest hotel. Like many western mining towns, Bisbee's
work force had originally been composed largely of skilled
American and English-born miners. But after 1900, new
technology and the growth of "open pit" mining decreased the
need for skilled men and created a growing demand for low-paid,
unskilled laborers. Most of these were Slavic, Italian, Czech, and
Mexican immigrants.

Previous organizing efforts in Bisbee had been hampered by the
sharp rivalry between two union locals, one affiliated with the
American Federation of Labor (AFL), the other with the more
radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or "Wobblies,"
as they were commonly known. On June 26, 1917, Bisbee's
Wobblies went on strike, throwing up picket lines in front of
mines and around town. Their demands included improvements in
safety precautions, no discrimination against union members, and
an increase in pay from $4.00 to $6.00 a day for underground
work and from $2.50 to $5.50 for aboveground work. The IWW
made special efforts to attract the lower paid foreign-born workers
to their cause and even hired two Mexican organizers to aid in this
effort.

Although the IWW had only 300 or 400 members in Bisbee, its
strike won support from more than half the town's 4,700 miners.
Even the hostile local press had to agree that the walkout was
peaceful, and observers noted that the strikers had voluntarily
suppressed the sale of liquor in town. But Walter Douglas, district
manager for Phelps-Dodge, announced, "There will be no
compromise because you cannot compromise with a rattlesnake."
Douglas, Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler, and Bisbee's
leading businessmen prepared to take matters into their own
hands. Meeting secretly, they carefully planned the forcible
deportation of strikers. They deputized some 2,000 armed men,
members of Bisbee's Citizens' Protective League and the Workers
Loyalty League. The group included company officials, small
businessmen, professionals, and anti -union workers. Local
telephone and telegraph offices agreed to cut Bisbee off from the
world by censoring outgoing messages. The El Paso and
Southwestern Railroad, a subsidiary of Phelps-Dodge, provided
the waiting boxcars. The vigilantes defended their illegal
conspiracy by exaggerating the threat of organized labor and by
invoking patriotism, racial purity, and the protection of white
womanhood. As America mobilized for war, these themes would
echo across the political landscape. The IWW's opposition to
America's entry into the European conflict made it vulnerable to
charges of disloyalty. A public proclamation, posted in Bisbee the
day of the deportation, claimed, "There is no labor trouble--we
are sure of that--but a direct attempt to embarrass and injure the
government of the United States." Sheriff Wheeler, playing to
racist fears, told a visiting journalist what worried him most was
the possibility "that the Mexicans in Bisbee and along the border
would take advantage of the disturbed conditions of the strike and
start an uprising, destroying the mines and murdering American
women and children." An army census of the deportees offered
quite a different picture. Of the 1,400 men, 520 owned property in
Bisbee. Nearly 500 had already registered for the draft, and more
than 200 had purchased Liberty Bonds. More than 400 were
married with children; only 400 were members of the IWW. Eighty
percent of the deportees were immigrants, including nearly 400
Mexicans. A mediation committee appointed by President
Woodrow Wilson to investigate the situation concluded that
"conditions in Bisbee were in fact peaceful and free from
manifestations of disorder or violence." Yet the deported men
found it difficult to fend off accusations that their strike was
anti-American and foreign inspired. Through the summer and fall
of 1917 Bisbee remained a community controlled by armed
vigilantes, arbitrarily deciding who could enter. Fighting back
from their refugee camp in Columbus, New Mexico, the miners
organized their own police force and elected an executive
committee to seek relief. They wrote to President Wilson,
informing him, "Common American citizens here are now
convinced that they have no constitutional rights." They promised
the president they would return to digging copper if the federal
government operated the nation's mines and smelters. National
IWW leader William D. "Big Bill" Haywood wired President
Wilson to threaten a general strike of metal miners and harvest
workers if the government did not return the deportees to their
homes and families. The presidential mediation committee
criticized the mine companies and declared the deportation illegal.
But it passed responsibility for the case to the state of Arizona,
denying federal jurisdiction in the matter. Arizona's attorney
general refused to offer protection for a return to Bisbee.

In September, when the army cut their rations in half, the men
gradually drifted away from Columbus. The camp was finally
disbanded in October 1917. The Bisbee deportation, and the
Wobbly-led campaign on behalf of its victims, convinced
President Wilson that the IWW was an un-American, subversive
organization and a threat to national security in wartime. The
Justice Department began planning an all-out legal assault that
would soon cripple the Wobblies. But Wilson could not ignore
protests against the Bisbee outrage coming from such prominent
and patriotic Americans as Samuel Gompers, head of the
American Federation of Labor. To demonstrate his
administration's commitment to harmonious industrial relations,
the president appointed a special commission to investigate
wartime labor conflicts and mediate equitable solutions. But
Arizona's mines would remain union free until the New Deal era
of the 1930s.

America's entry into the war created a national sense of purpose
and an unprecedented mobilization of American resources.
Unifying the country and winning the war now took precedence
over progressive reforms. The war also aroused powerful political
emotions and provided a banner under which some citizens tried
to cleanse their communities of anyone who did not conform. In a
1918 speech, Arizona State Senator Fred Sutter hailed the benefits
of vigilante justice. "And what are the results in Bisbee since the
deportation?" he asked. "They are, sir, a practically 100 percent
American camp; a foreigner to get a job there today had to give a
pretty good account of himself. The mines are today producing
more copper than ever before and we are a quiet, peaceful, law
-abiding community and will continue so, so long as the IWWs or
other enemies of the government let us alone."