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Issues in U.S. Immigration

Settlement house movement

by Barbara Bair

The Event: Rise of charitable settlement houses in major urban centers

Date: 1890's-early twentieth century

Immigration Issues: Families and marriage; Women

Significance: The settlement house movement provided social services and cultural programs to immigrant and poor urban women and their families and professional opportunities to college-educated women who desired to work on behalf of social reform.

The settlement house movement began among Christian Socialists and university-affiliated reformers in England and spread to major cities in North America during the 1890's. The houses, which were established primarily in the urban centers of the Midwest and Northeast, multiplied from six in 1891 to more than four hundred in 1910. They became principal agencies of social reform during the Progressive era.

Philosophy and Ideals

A reaction to growing urbanization, immigration, and changes in labor patterns, settlement houses emphasized social action to improve impoverished living conditions and exploitative labor practices. Influenced by the Social Gospel movement, they emphasized character building and an organic vision of society based on cultural mediation and mutual reciprocity between native-born citizens and immigrants and between the middle class and the poor. They simultaneously advocated social assimilation to middle-class norms and cultural pluralism or diversity. These positions often came into conflict. The original settlement houses were also experiments in collective living. Located in poor ethnic neighborhoods, they attracted resident workers who were mainly young, idealistic, college-educated men and women from well-to-do households.

Programs and Services

Early programs focused on providing services for children, including day care nurseries for the children of working mothers, kindergartens, boys' and girls' clubs, recreation programs, nature outings, playgrounds, and gymnasiums. Citizenship classes, emphasizing literacy and the English language, were held for adults, as well as practical training courses in home economics, dressmaking, cooking, sanitation, and nutrition. Medical and nursing services were provided by some houses, most notably by the extensive visiting nurse service of the Henry Street Settlement House in New York. Family counseling and job referral bureaus were offered to working women. Exhibitions, art history, and the performing arts, including music and drama, also played an important part in settlement house programming. Resident workers and teachers such as Ellen Gates Starr of Hull-House believed in the uplifting value of fine art appreciation.

Efforts were made to attract Italian, Greek, and East European women to the houses by appealing to nationalist loyalties, including the planning of ethnic festivals, receptions, and celebrations of folk dancing and crafts. At Hull-House, a labor museum was established in which immigrant women demonstrated the history of textile arts. The museum program sought to bridge cultural gaps that had developed between first-generation immigrants, who were highly skilled in handicrafts and traditional manufactures, and their children, who were more familiar with factory work and mechanization, many having lost respect for older ways.

Cooking class in Chicago's Hull-House.

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(University of Illinois at Chicago, University Library, Jane Addams Memorial Collection)

Institutionalization and Reform

Many of the programs that existed on a trial basis in the settlement houses were adopted by public school systems, park and urban planning agencies, and the developing juvenile justice system and social work institutions. In addition to providing services and stimulating appreciation of diverse cultural heritages, settlement workers were also in the forefront of the formation of social policy. They gathered data to educate the population at large as to the needs of the urban poor, and they lobbied for municipal reform and state and federal legislation that addressed the issues of housing, labor, women's rights, and prostitution. Many of the reforms that they advocated became central tenets of the Progressive Party platform during Theodore Roosevelt's presidential bid in 1912.

Ethnicity and Race

While settlement workers saw themselves as advocates for the lower classes, their application of middle-class values was sometimes at odds with immigrant women's perspectives. Conflicts existed, for example, over economic issues involved in child labor. While settlement workers sought to abolish the practice, many immigrant families relied on the income that children earned. Settlement workers also stressed white slavery aspects of prostitution, portraying the prostitute as a victim and emphasizing the sexual double standard and the curbing of male behavior while avoiding the idea of sex work as a chosen occupation.

Few immigrant women ascended to positions of leadership in the protective leagues that emerged from the houses or in the resident work itself. While most settlements were run by native-born whites on behalf of white ethnic immigrants, some offered separate branches for black residents, and a few, such as the Phillis Wheatley Settlement in Minneapolis, were founded specifically as residence facilities for African Americans.

Women's Opportunities and the Legacy of Reform

Although settlement houses served both men and women, women such as Lillian Wald of the Henry Street Settlement House and Jane Addams of Hull-House were among the earliest founders of houses and the most prominent leaders of the movement. The settlement houses in general provided outlets of usefulness for educated women, aid to working women with families, and models of effective female leadership, networking, and authority.

Many women who initially were involved in settlement work went on to positions of influence in organizations, unions, and government agencies, broadening the impact of the settlement houses on the wider sphere of reform. Florence Kelley went from settlement experience to founding the National Consumers' League in 1899, which worked to improve labor conditions for women and children. Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott both became directors of the Children's Bureau. Alice Hamilton became a leading expert on industrial medicine and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL), a labor organization, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights group, were formed with support from settlement workers.

Alice Gannett of the Henry Street Settlement House led the lobbying efforts that resulted in the passage of the Mothers' Aid Law of 1913, which provided pensions to needy mothers of dependent children, and Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott were leaders in the new field of social work. Both Addams and Wald became central figures in the war-era pacifist movement, with Addams chair of the Women's Peace Party and head of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and Wald president of the American Union Against Militarism.

The settlement house movement bridged the gap between older Victorian concepts of charity and philanthropy and modern social work. Over time, the unique nature of the houses was eclipsed by the professionalization of social services, which changed the cooperative volunteer staffing of the settlements to salaried and specialized positions. Post-World War I conser vatism and changes in fund-raising methods also diminished the operations of the houses.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Bair, Barbara. "Settlement House Movement." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0195.

APA 7th

Bair, B. (2015). Settlement house movement. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Bair, Barbara. "Settlement House Movement." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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