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John Lovejoy Elliott and the Social Settlement Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Ellen Salzman-Fiske
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Extract

During the Progressive Era, American social settlements played a critical role in helping immigrants adjust to a new life that was puzzling, difficult, and often grueling. Settlements offered immigrants medical help, language classes, art and music lessons, day-care services — and sometimes a place where they could learn to be community leaders. Most often, it is the inspiring work of women reformers that one thinks of in connection with the important work of social settlements. Yet among the many prominent women, several men in the settlement movement were influential and extraordinary in their own right. John Lovejoy Elliott, founder and head worker of the Hudson Guild in New York City, was a prime example.

Although Elliott held such impressive posts as President of the Board of Directors of the National Federation of Settlements (from 1919 to 1923) and was described by one of his contemporaries as “one of the great social workers and spiritual leaders of our time…. a kind of lay saint,” historically Elliott's work has been overshadowed by that of his more famous female counterparts. Yet one could argue that it is Elliott who created and put into practice a settlement house that best addressed the needs of immigrants and most helped the immigrant underclass achieve some independence and political power.

Although John Lovejoy Elliott had a single focus (helping immigrants), female settlement head workers, such as Jane Addams, often pursued a dual goal. They were concerned about helping immigrants, but also were intent on giving college-educated, middle-class or upper-class young American women something to do with their lives. “We have in America,” wrote Addams, “a fast growing number of cultivated young people who have no recognized outlet for their active abilities.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 30 , October 2005 , pp. 383 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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References

1. Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Mary Simkovitch, and Florence Kelley are a few of the most prominent women in the settlement movement. See, for example, Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910; rept. New York: Signet, 1960)Google Scholar; Wald, Lillian D., The House on Henry Street (New York: Henry Holt, 1915)Google Scholar; Simkovitch, Mary Kingsbury, Neighborhood: My Story of Greenwich House (New York: W. W. Norton, 1938)Google Scholar; and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

2. Jerome Nathanson, “John Dewey: Some Reflections” (n.d.), 3.

3. There are a few secondary works on John Lovejoy Elliott, but not many. The only biography of Elliott has been written Hohoff, Tay: A Ministry to Man: The Life of John Lovejoy Elliott (New York: Harper, 1959)Google Scholar; a chapter on Elliott can be found in Berson, Robin Kadison's Marching to a Different Drummer: Unrecognized Heroes of American History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1994)Google Scholar; Howard B. Radest has a chapter on Elliott, in Toward Common Ground: The History of the Ethical Societies in the United States (New York: Fieldston, 1969)Google Scholar; and short but useful references are made to John Lovejoy Elliott in two histories of social settlements: Mina, Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1886–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Trolander, Judith Ann, Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Both Carson and Trolander note the distinction between Elliott's guild concept and the average settlement.

4. Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull House,” 94Google Scholar.

5. See the correspondence from Elliott to his mother, in Dan Carpenter Papers, Special Collections, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York (hereafter referred to as Dan Carpenter Papers).

6. Hohoff, , Ministry to Man, 2Google Scholar; and Radest, , Toward Common Ground, 110Google Scholar.

7. Elliott, John Lovejoy, “John L. Elliott,” in The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement, 1876–1926 (New York: D. Appleton, 1926), 95Google Scholar.

8. Ibid., 96.

9. Coit, Stanton, Neighborhood Guilds: An Instrument of Social Reform (London: Swan Sonnenseschein, 1892), 1Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., 4–5.

11. See Trolander, , Professionalism and Social Change, 9Google Scholar.

12. From One Small Room, pamphlet published by the Hudson Guild (1945), and John Lovejoy Elliott at Seventy, published by the Hudson Guild (December 2, 1938), in Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (hereafter referred to as Social Welfare History Archives).

13. Hohoff, , Ministry to Man, 82Google Scholar.

14. Berson, , Marching to a Different Drummer, 99Google Scholar.

15. Radest, , Toward Common Ground, 232Google Scholar.

16. Algernon Black, “My First Settlement House Job The Hudson Guild, in Chelsea — ‘Hell's Kitchen’” (1923), 2–3, in box 17, Algernon Black Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York.

17. Ibid., 2–3.

18. Ibid., 3–5.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Elliott, John L., “A Short Story of the Hudson Guild,” in The Hudson Guild: A Brief Record of Twenty-five Years of Service (New York: Hudson Guild, ca. 1920)Google Scholar.

22. From One Small Room, 1.

23. Elliott, , “A Short Story,” 8Google Scholar.

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26. For example, Dan Carpenter to George Burnett, March 16, 1948, in Dan Carpenter Papers.

27. “John” to Dan Carpenter, March 31, 1948, in Dan Carpenter Papers.

28. This type of sociological research was not uncommon among social settlements at the time. Jane Addams and the Hull House residents, for example, did similar research in Chicago. See Hull — House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions, by Residents of Hull House (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1895)Google Scholar.

29. Hohoff suggests that the idea of district committees was later copied in places like Cincinnati, Ohio, (Ministry to Man, 79–80)Google Scholar.

30. Quote by Dan Carpenter in Kisselhoff, Jeff, “On the Waterfront,” New York Post, 04, 23, 1989, p. 51Google Scholar.

31. Trolander, , Professionalism and Social Change, 10Google Scholar.

32. Black, “My First Settlement House Job,” 7.

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34. Ibid., 10.

35. From One Small Room, 23.

36. Black, “My First Settlement Job,” 13.

37. “‘Neighbors’ — A Visitation,” Standard 16 (07 1929–05 1930): 21Google Scholar.

38. “The Hudson Guild Farm,” in Social Welfare History Archives; and “Hudson Guild Farm,” Standard, 10, 1917, 4Google Scholar.

39. Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull House, 110Google Scholar.

40. For a description of the economics, population, and general background of Rochdale, England, see Higgs, Edward, Domestic Servants and Households in Rochdale, 1851–1871 (New York: Garland, 1986), 18–25Google Scholar. For a brief history of the cooperative movement in Rochdale and for a description of the democratic principles practiced by the Rochdale workers, see Birchall, Johnston, Co-op: The People's Business (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1994), chs. 3 and 4Google Scholar. See also Self-help by the People (1858), reprinted as The History of the Rochdale Pioneers (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)Google Scholar; and Webb, Beatrice, The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895)Google Scholar.

41. Elliott, John, “Cooperation: The Keynote for Reconstruction,” Standard, 10 1918, 7–8Google Scholar.

42. Elliott, John Lovejoy, “Forces Beneath the Surface in the Lives of Working People,” Standard 9 (07 1922–05 1923)Google Scholar.

43. Hohoff, , Ministry to Man, 84Google Scholar; and Radest, , Toward Common Ground, 119Google Scholar.

44. Elliott, , “A Short Story,” 23Google Scholar.

45. Hawkins, Gaynell, Educational Experiments in Social Settlements (New York: American Association for Adult Education, 1937), 7Google Scholar.

46. Elliott, , “Forces Beneath the Surface,” 290Google Scholar.

47. See Report Written About the School for Printers Apprentices (n.d.), in Dan Carpenter Papers.

48. Elliott, , “Forces Beneath the Surface”; From One Small Room, 22Google Scholar; and Hohoff, , Ministry to Man, 133–34Google Scholar.