« p. 318-321: The Warehouse above the Train Station
Remarks on Hull House and the South Park
p. 321-327
As I’ve said in previous chapters, when it comes to those institutions who set out to improve the situation of the poor in our modern economic system, I find that their efforts turn out to be ephemeral, if not downright weakening and damaging. If all we’re doing is trimming the branches of the modern order and propping it up with a little philanthropy, then all our efforts are ephemeral and weakening. We should only allow ourselves to attack the roots.
Here, in this city, whose enormous growth illuminates the production and payment of labor today, in this burning, hysterical city, some of these above-mentioned institutions have developed, exemplary places which put to shame all similar institutions.
Hull House, the world-renowned settlement in the poor area of Chicago, survives mainly through the towering personality of its founder, Jane Addams. This woman means more for the idea of the place than for any actual result, which is typically achieved through the financial backing of rich Americans. In a later chapter, I’d like to remark on the Mogwab (an Indian word, which translates into European as something like pompous ass or snob), the great friend of capitalist humanity. It is only really through Miss Addam’s personality that Hull House is justified, in the same way that in the east William R. George justifies Freeville. And both enterprises are supported by a stream of money from Rockefeller, McCormick and Armour. I think of Miss Addams of Hull House and Daddy George of Freeville as Band-Aids on the blasted, festering wound of modern business.
Hull House pursues two goals. One: to convince intelligent, sensible people, those who consider the people around them, to contribute. Two: to help the poor into acceptable, well-lit, warm rooms where they can forget their lives for a few hours.
A segment of Hull House accommodates the students, while another accommodates a variety of buildings around Hull House where the poor can exercise, sleep, eat, play music, dance, attend the theater and engage in social functions.
A colorful map hangs in the reception hall of Hull House, describing the layout of the neighborhood home for home, colored according to nationality. The map shows that, in one of the nearby tenements, Greeks, Bohemians, Swedes, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Italians, and Jews from both Russia and Asia Minor live together. The map is updated quite often. The tenements in a kilometer radius around Hull House have been cleaned recently right down to the center, but all the same, each of these nationalities, who all belong to the great international brotherhood of Misérables, get out as soon as possible in search of healthier areas, if they’re able. The colorful map then gets to add another color.
In the afternoon, we were guests in the afternoon and brought to a pretty theater. A Masque of the Seasons was performed. The program consisted of cute dances, speeches and group singing, all performed by children in the music school and surrounding houses. Greek, Italian, Jewish and Irish children sang, jumped and hopped. It was nice to see. The rich and well-endowed gentlemen who supported Hull House sat in the auditorium and clapped. Then, in a pretty, artistic, furnished dining hall we took our evening meal with the students, intellectuals and the teachers of the Hull House School -- Miss Addams was unfortunately in New York -- and after dinner some kind ladies accompanied us over to the areas with the dance halls, gyms and clubhouses.
My friend and I, we looked meaningfully up the steps into the courtyard as our kind female guides went ahead of us. The section we were leaving and the section we were going to, through which we wandered as if through a museum or art gallery . . . something loose hung these sections together. You had to cross a cold courtyard to get from wing to wing, and the atmosphere in both of the wings was utterly, completely different . . . Hull House climbed into the air before our eyes and exploded like a soap bubble --
To live among the poor (in a separate area, comfortably furnished); to study their living conditions (for a year, maybe two or three, and then to set yourself up as a social worker on Lake Shore Drive or Michigan Avenue); to live in the tenements with the poorest of them, to make it through their ten-hour work days, to live on the food you can buy with that sort of income (after eight weeks you’ll even go to the cafeterias in the evening to eat). To do such things!
Jane Addams, after all, is one of the great women of America, belonging to the same gender as Frances Willard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony . . . and when you read her writings, you fall under the same fascination as the rest of the Hull House Students. Her qualifications and actions prove her to be a principled woman standing alone, seeking and finding a family and a circle of influence, a sincere revolutionary soul and person of nobility in the midst of our sorrowful present day. You can feel the magnetic strength such a soul has on various do-gooders and amateur philanthropists. She takes their individual impulses and bends them to her will.
I had a considerably stronger impression of the parks. One night, the friendly superintendent took us in his car, and we made the rounds through the public gardens and field houses south of the windigen Stadt.
God stood by me as we crossed through the smells, wastes, unlit or half-lit alleys, the wooden houses and bordellos until we came across the first green oasis. But all was forgotten at the oasis.
The South Park relies somewhat on private means but is owned, built and maintained chiefly through city taxes. It stretches from Michigan Avenue (Grant Park) to Lake Calumet (Park 17). There are about 24 of them and they cover an area of 2500 acres. Some of the larger ones are filled with museums, botanic gardens, golf courses and yacht harbors. More importantly, however, are the smaller ones, which are set aside for the overpopulated slums around the slaughterhouses, the suburban factories and the Negro settlements. The area of these smaller parks varies between 7 1/2 and 23 acres.
The friendly superintendent shows us three of the small parks. Pretty Italian pergolas are set up in front of the field houses. Behind these are large cement swimming pools embedded into the ground. Surrounding it, in the park itself, you’ll find open-air sanctuaries for babies, sunbathing areas for women, paths through the grass to stroll around on and sand mounds for building castles. On a small stage, Jews rehearse the drama: Esther, a Purim Play; a Lithuanian club next to it dances in a circle; in a shower room you can admire young Greek workers, who cool off after a basketball game and are preparing to go home.
A little worried, we asked our guide: “What rules do you have to follow to get in here? What kind of papers, passes, tickets, tax papers, birth certificates or business permits do you have to show before they let you in?”
Why! Nothing at all! our astonished American answered.
“But still, you do have to pay something to use the library, the shower rooms, the soap, the gymnasium, the equipment?”
“Not a cent. Everything you see here is free to the people of Chicago and stands at their disposal unencumbered. Everyone is welcome. You can speak whatever language you want. The poorest of us can get those flea-ridden rags off their bodies. You can come whenever you want. You don’t need to show us any papers, you don’t have to write down your name, neither your right name nor a fake one. Everyone is welcome. We live in a democratic country here.”
These words, these phrases, in Chicago . . . And yet, everything we’ve seen, this moment out here in the free and open almost seems to complement the frightening reality around these oases, as if all of it were somehow reconciled with Chicago, the most terrifying city in the modern world!