Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
DOI 10.1007/s11186-011-9156-2
Pragmatism and empirical sociology: the case
of Jane Addams and Hull-House, 1889–1895
Erik Schneiderhan
Published online: 6 October 2011
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract The theoretical tools bequeathed to us by classical and revival pragmatism
offer the potential for informing robust empirical work in sociology. But this
potential has yet to be adequately demonstrated. There are a number of strands of
pragmatism; this article draws primarily upon Dewey’s theory of action to examine
Hull-House in its early years. Of particular interest are the practices of Jane Addams
and other Hull-House residents. What were they doing to help people and why? An
attempt to answer these questions in non-teleological terms forms the empirical basis
of the article. This article should provide some support to those historical
sociologists who might consider (or already are) taking a pragmatist turn in their
work. And, it should strengthen the empirical foundations of pragmatism as an
alternative (non-teleological) way to understand social action.
Keywords Institutions . Historical sociology . Social settlements . John Dewey .
Charity organization . Social provision
There is a pragmatist revival occurring in the social sciences and in sociology in
particular. By pragmatism, I refer to the American philosophical school that emerged in
the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century and is most commonly
associated with John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce among others. The past
decade has witnessed efforts to recover and reconstruct pragmatism in general, (Misak
2007), to highlight and recover particular pragmatist theorists (Ansell 2009), to
illustrate the potential of pragmatism as an alternative theory of social action (Silver
2011; Whitford 2002), to consider connections between pragmatism and ethnomethodology (Emirbayer and Maynard 2011), to examine present day economic
organizations (Herrigel 2010; O’Riain 2004; Sabel 2005), to study collective emotions
in social movements (Emirbayer and Goldberg 2005), to reinvigorate African
E. Schneiderhan (*)
Department of Sociology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road North,
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
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American politics (Glaude 2007) and to theorize social mechanisms (Gross 2009). But
with the pragmatist revival comes the potential for renewed criticism, most notably on
the questions of whether and how pragmatism can help us to do empirical work. The
answers remain unclear. The bulk of the literature on pragmatist theory remains at the
level of ideas without substantive empirical foundations. Put another way, the
empirical foundations of pragmatist theory have yet to be adequately tested. In what
follows, I engage in a deep, contextual analysis of practices of Jane Addams and other
residents of Hull-House in an attempt to generate increasing confidence in the heuristic
potential of pragmatist theory in empirical sociology.
More specifically, one of the major contributions of this work is its illustration of
the utility of pragmatist theory as a heuristic framework in the study of history.
Institutionalism, rational choice theory, and the cultural turn are three main “foci” of
what Adams et al. (2005, pp. 30–45) term the “third-wave” of historical sociology.
All three are grounded (explicitly or implicitly) in teleological interpretations of
social action. This is somewhat obvious in the cases of institutionalism and rational
choice theory, both of which rest on a means-ends, interest-driven theoretical
foundation. But it is also generally the case with the cultural turn, in which cultural
understanding or values, rather than interests, are the driving force of action. In other
words, in a culturalist approach, ends are still given (by culture) and social actors
still (teleologically) realize those ends. What does this mean? In our dominant way
of accounting for social action in historical sociology, a person or group is usually
depicted as setting a goal (the end), figuring out the best way to get there (the
means), and then doing it (the action). The ends may vary in origin, coming from
rational calculation or even culture. But they all possess the common denominator of
teleology. The end in the account is the inherent purpose (what the Greeks called a
telos) that drives and guides social action. Pragmatism takes a different approach to
social action, rejecting the means-ends dualism. Pragmatist theory is grounded in the
notion that social actors are self-directed, conscious entities. True, these actors may
be buffeted by social forces, but there is a sense that they are (to some degree) able
to alter their social trajectories and thereby possess some modicum of control over
their own destinies. Yet pragmatism, as Whitford (2002) points out, contains an
implicit criticism of the teleological intentionality of action contained in the meansends dualism of most theories of action; action is a continual process, grounded in
experience, with no clear beginning or end. There are a number of strands of
pragmatism; this article draws primarily upon Dewey’s theory of action. (Secondarily, it also invokes C. Wright Mills’s theory of vocabularies of motive, Hans Joas’s
theory of the creativity of action, Jane Addams’s theory of perplexity, and Mary
Parker Follett’s theory of creative experience.) In using pragmatism, this article
could invigorate and renew an old way of looking at means and ends within history.
In other words, this project could provide support to those historical sociologists
who might consider (or already are) taking a pragmatist turn in their work.
Note on Addams scholarship
The primary objects of analysis in the pages to come are Jane Addams and HullHouse. For those readers unfamiliar with Addams’s work in the late nineteenth and
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early twentieth centuries, she is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, founder of Chicago’s
Hull-House, and considered the mother of Social Work in the United States. Addams
founded Hull-House in 1889 as one of first so-called “settlements” in the United
States. She lived right alongside the poor in one of the most disadvantaged
neighborhoods in Chicago. It might be useful for the reader to understand how this
article relates to the extant scholarship on Addams. To be clear, the literature on
Addams is vast and a review of its entirety is beyond the scope of this article.1 But a
brief and targeted survey reveals that scholarship on Addams has moved through
several phases. The first substantive biography of Addams was published in 1935
(the year she died) by Addams’s nephew, James Weber Linn (2000 [1935]).2 This
work, while a treasure trove of information on Addams and Hull-House, was not
particularly analytical. It stood as the main work on Addams until 1960—the
centennial of Addams’s birth—when a series of scholarly lectures and publications
emerged, most notably an essay by Henry Steele Commager. This essay, which was
initially published in the Saturday Review, became the (now classic) foreword to the
popular Signet edition of 20 Years at Hull-House, published in 1961. In the
foreword, Commager (1961, p. xvi) famously characterized Addams as akin to the
Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “More and more
[Addams] came to feel like Alice with the Red Queen: no matter how fast she ran,
she was still in the same place; the poverty, the slums, the crime and vice, the
misgovernment, the illiteracy, the exploitation, the inhumanity of man to man—all
these were still there.” While painting her as a heroic figure, Commager was perhaps
one of the first to dwell on the limitations of Addams’s work and the sheer daunting
task faced by social reformers.
The rekindling of interest in Addams 1960s led to closer scrutiny of her work,
particularly using lenses of gender, class, and culture (cf. Conway 1967; Lasch 1965;
Levine 1962). The general consensus at this time was that Addams had much to
contribute to the radical political agenda of the 1960s, in terms of her struggles on
behalf of organized labor, her efforts to empower women, and her understanding of
the gap between her generation and the preceding one (a theme that still had
resonance 100 years after her birth). It was on the heels of this reinvigorated interest
in Addams that Allen F. Davis (2000 [1973]) made the first serious effort in 40 years
to write a biography of Addams. This work, tellingly entitled American Heroine,
prompted a debate over whether Addams had been accurately characterized, and also
over whether she had been given short thrift as a social theorist in her own right
(Knight 2005, p. 408). The point is that Addams scholarship increasingly became the
site of contestation, with a plethora of publications in history and social work (cf.
Lasch-Quinn 1993; Lissak 1989; Mink 1995) viewing Addams with a critical eye,
particularly on matters of race. The work of two scholars—Mary Jo Deegan (1988,
2002) and Charlene Haddock Seigfried (1996)—stand in sharp contrast to these
critical assessments, presenting Addams as a pragmatist theorist in her own right and
providing evidence of Addams’s “feminist pragmatist” practice, her constant
1
For a comprehensive and unparalleled discussion of the literature on Addams, see Knight (2005, pp.
405–412), “Afterword: Scholarship and Jane Addams.” See also the introduction to Jane Addams and the
Practice of Democracy (Fischer, et al. 2009, pp. 1–8).
2
It is worth noting that, as Anne Firor Scott (2000, pp. xiv–xv) points out, Addams “had read and
commented on the first eight chapters of Linn’s manuscript and discussed his plans for the next three.”
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advocacy for social citizenship, and her efforts to bring racial equality to social
relations in Chicago and beyond.
The advent of Addams’s 150th birthday has precipitated another round of
publications (this one included). This group has, taken as a whole, delved more deeply
into Addams’s pragmatist methods and how they contribute to the (re)construction of
citizenship, democracy, and peace. There are several recent biographies of Addams,
which provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of her life (cf. Brown 2004;
Knight 2010; Knight 2005), while focusing on Addams’s contributions to democratic
theory and practice. Other recent work has picked up or paralleled the investigation of
the nexus of Addams’s practice and democratic (and social) growth. Much of this
work is framed as a reinterpretation or recovery of Addams’s theory and practice. In
terms of reinterpretation, Jackson (2001), for example, examines Addams’s actions in
terms of “lines of activity” that are creative and performative, taking a dramaturgical
approach to Hull-House as a veritable performance hall of social provision. In terms of
recovery, Westhoff (2007) sees Addams’s ideas and practice as central to the
development of what she terms “democratic social knowledge.” The edited volume
Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (Fischer, et al. 2009) contains work in a
similar vein. We see chapters that illuminate her cooperative spirit (Knight 2009),
highlight her ability to engage in “principled” compromise (Seigfried 2009), and
elucidate the ties between her democratic ideals and her spirituality (Brown 2009).
Deegan’s (2010) forceful reclamation of Addams’s reputation on race is the most
recent and noteworthy in the literature, marking clear, empirically informed boundaries
around Addams’s theoretical and practical reputations.
But this most recent phase is an incomplete project. For example, there is still a
lack of understanding of Addams’s complicated relationship with relief and charity
organization in Chicago, and how this relationship influenced her pragmatist
practice. This work attempts to improve this understanding by showing how HullHouse emerged in relation to other existing organizations in the field. Further, I
attempt to join the conversation concerning Addams and pragmatism, using
pragmatist theory (in an ironic twist) to study a pragmatist’s practice. Finally,
Addams has yet to receive her due as a pragmatist theorist in her own right. I attempt
to correct this through my own practice, by using Addams’s theory as part of the
theoretical frame for this article. It is my hope that historical sociologists in particular
will welcome Addams’s theoretical contributions and deploy her ideas in their own
work. As such, this article can be understood as an essay in recovery, not only of
Addams’s deeds, but her social theory as well.
Of particular interest in what follows are the practices of Addams and other
residents during Hull-House’s early years. What were they doing and why? An
attempt to answer the above questions in non-teleological terms forms the empirical
basis of what follows. Pragmatist theory will help us see in a new light the way
residents helped others (what I call social provision) during Hull-House’s early
years. When Hull-House opened its doors in September 1889, a new way of
practicing social provision began in Chicago. Without any concrete goals or welllaid plans, Jane Addams was the impetus behind a different way of helping people.
Some would argue that it really wasn’t anything new at all. But whether or not the
so-called “Hull-House model” of helping people was something new in worldhistorical terms is beside the point. It was new for Chicago. It was new for the
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United States. And it revolutionized the way helping was done, at least for a short
while. The most important two elements of this revolutionary practice were its
pragmatist spirit and its ethos of help without conditions. Social provision in
Chicago prior to 1889 was full of provisions, exceptions, and caveats largely derived
from the logic of the market. Any help that was provided was absolutely conditional
on a number of things beyond the control of the individual in need. There was little
room in these rigid rules for the unique situations of individuals in determining the
type of assistance that might be most effective. There was typically a strong
distinction between who was worthy of help and who was not. The line was not to
be blurred. This would change with the advent of Hull-House.
This is a study of one person (Jane Addams) and one association (Hull-House) as
part of a theoretical project, in that it shows the heuristic value of pragmatism in
doing historical sociology. It is an empirical project as well, in that it adds to the
historical narrative of Addams and Hull-House. To anticipate potential criticism, the
use of a single case study to inform theory has strong precedents in historical
sociology. In many works too numerous to mention, rich contextual analysis of a
single case enables a deep look at practice and generates new understanding of
complex social processes.3 As a case study, Jane Addams and Hull-House hold out
the potential for a similar outcome in terms of our thinking about the theory and
practice of social provision. To be sure, Hull-House is well-trodden ground for
researchers. But that is precisely what makes it such a rich case—there is an
abundance of data that allows an unusually deep examination of practice.
The rest of the article is organized as follows: The next section takes up American
pragmatism, presenting those concepts in pragmatist theory used as heuristics in
making sense of the data in the project. Think of this section as answering the
questions “What is pragmatism anyway?” and “Why use it here?” Following this
section is an engagement with the historical case, beginning with a picture painted in
broad brushstrokes of Chicago social provision before moving on to Addams and
Hull-House. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the significance of the
article for the social sciences—in particular for historical sociology.
Theoretical framework
The origins of American pragmatism are somewhat murky (with some scholars
looking to Kant or Emerson for initial formulations) but most scholars credit Charles
Sanders Peirce and William James with its initial formalization. These two men,
along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, met frequently during 1872; the meetings of
“The Metaphysical Club” resulted in the construction of a worldview that formed the
nucleus of pragmatist philosophy (Margolis 2004, p. 35).4 Interestingly, the
3
For example, Voss (1993) draws on the case of the Knights of Labor in New Jersey to rethink elements
of the political process model. Tackett (1996) looks at the diaries of Third Estate members in eighteenth
century France to make sense of why they became revolutionaries. Padgett and Ansell (1993) draw on the
network structure of the Medici family in Florence to help inform our understanding of the process of state
building. Vaughan (2006) uses the case of NASA’s Columbia accident to, among other things, illuminate
the process of idea diffusion and expand our thinking on social boundaries.
4
For more on the Metaphysical Club, see the eponymous title by Louis Menand (2001).
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conventional pragmatist canon does not include Jane Addams. For example, Feffer
(1993), writing on the Chicago pragmatists of the 1890s, does not consider Addams
as part of the group, although he does acknowledge that Addams influenced
Dewey’s ideas. Margolis (2006, p. 2) points to Peirce, James, and Dewey as the
“three principal pragmatists,” which is correct if one considers written expression of
pragmatist philosophy as the main determining factor. But Deegan (1988, p. 255)
terms Addams a “critical pragmatist,” emphasizing Addams’s interest in “empowering the community, the laborer, the poor, the elderly and youth, women and
immigrants.” Lengermann and Niebrugge (1998, p. 83) see Addams as facing a
growing distinction (in early twentieth-century American social science) between
theory and application, that is, thinking about something versus actually doing it.
Perhaps Addams can best be understood as a “practical pragmatist,” for in her case
(and in true pragmatist fashion), she was focused on actions and experience and only
later would attempt to formalize and label what she had been doing at Hull-House.5
Most scholars would agree that pragmatism received its earliest articulations from
Peirce, whose writings appeared in magazines such as Popular Science Monthly.
Peirce published several seminal articles during the late 1870s, including “How to
Make our Ideas Clear,” a piece that presented what was later to be known as the
“pragmatic maxim.”6 Pragmatism is not just a theory of action. It has a normative
and evaluative dimension as well; Peirce’s maxim is critical to the pragmatist project
and also helps shed light on the data in this work. The pragmatist maxim is as
follows: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings,
we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these
effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Peirce 1992 [1878], p. 132)
The idea here is that one must interrogate any understanding of the world and any
actions related to that understanding in terms of what William James (1981 [1907],
p. 43) called their “cash-value” in society. “What difference would it practically
make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true?” James (p. 26) asks
us. What we think and what we do are inextricably intertwined. As such, we should
understand experience as critical to pragmatist theory; it is the basis of morality and
knowledge.
Pragmatism offers us a way out of the rigid and invariant ontology of the meansends frame. As James (1981 [1907], p. 73) points out, “pragmatism tends to unstiffen
all our theories.” The pragmatists rejected the Cartesian mind-body dualism in favor
of the notion that experience is the foundation of knowing. Thinking does not exist
in the ether (Dewey 2007 [1916]). It arises from action. Addams (2002 [1902], 6)
tells us that if we wish this action (and the thinking and intelligence that emerge
from it) to possess “social morality,” we must consider the “moral experiences of the
many.” We will see that Addams and other residents of Hull-House exercised such
consideration in their experiences with their neighbors; the result was an ethos of
“making a difference” in the practical ways they offered help in Chicago.
5
The reader should not conflate the theoretical framework I deploy with the actual relations Addams had
with others. For example, just because Addams had a collegial relationship with Mead does not
necessarily mean that Mead’s theory is a requisite part of the theoretical frame deployed in this article.
6
See pp. 124–141 of Houser and Kloesel (1992).
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What Addams did at Hull-House, that is, her experience, should be understood as
a relational process. Mary Parker Follett (an oft-overlooked pragmatist) urges us to
think of “experience as an interplay of forces, as the activity of relating leading
through fresh relating to a new activity”(1924, p. 81). In short, we need to focus on
the relational. In fact, a contribution of this work is to show that such an
understanding is fruitful. Dewey argues that the “separation of “mind” from direct
occupation with things throws emphasis on things at the expense of relations or
connections” (2007 [1916], p. 106). The relational approach is more than just a focus
on the processual—it is a commitment to making relations the primary units of
analysis. As Emirbayer (1997, p. 287) points out in his call for more relational
sociology, “the very terms or units involved in a transaction derive their meaning,
significance, and identity from the (changing) functional roles they play within that
transaction. The latter, seen as a dynamic, unfolding process, becomes the primary
unit of analysis rather than the constituent elements themselves.” The agency of the
social actor cannot be understood apart from the situation within which action
unfolds (294). In fact, Emirbayer’s recent relational manifesto is built on a
pragmatist foundation, most notably the work of pragmatist John Dewey.7 What
does all this mean? In the case taken up in these pages, a relational sociological
approach might lead one to ask, “What was it that Hull-House emerged in relation
to?” Or, one could examine how Addams’s actions were influenced and shaped by
the relations within which she was embedded. The relational approach leads us to
think about Hull-House (or any other organization in the past), not in terms of what
it was, but in terms of what it was becoming, that is, in terms of what Scott (2001,
10913) calls “ongoing relations.”
Furthermore, and in keeping with the relational approach mentioned above,
Dewey advocates a categorical rejection of the means-ends dualism in social action
theory, preferring to think of action as a continual process with no real beginning or
end. There is no specific, concrete end toward which one moves by deploying
particular means. Rather, Dewey prefers to think in terms of “ends-in-view” that
emerge from experience itself. “Ends-in-view, as distinct from ends as accomplished
results, themselves function as directive means; or, in ordinary language, as plans”
(Dewey 1991 [1939], p. 238) For Dewey (1988 [1922], p. 155), “ends are ends-inview or aims. They arise out of natural effects or consequences which in the
beginning are hit upon, stumbled upon so far as any purpose is concerned.” In the
Deweyan frame, “means are means; they are intermediates, middle terms […] the
“end” is the last act thought of; the means are the acts to be performed prior to it in
time” (p. 27). Drawing on the metaphor of target practice, Dewey points out that the
shooter does not simply fire at targets because they are there on the rifle range.
Rather, she sets up targets to improve her marksmanship. The target, which could be
seen as an end to be reached (or shot) by means of firing a rifle, can also be seen as a
means to skill improvement, which in itself is likely a means to something else and
so on. Thus, “in a strict sense an end-in-view is a means in present action; present
action is not a means to a remote end” (p. 15). This is a back-and-forth process: “We
do something to the thing and then it does something to us in return: such is the
peculiar combination” (Dewey 2007 [1916], p. 104). Another of Dewey’s metaphors
7
In particular, Emirbayer heavily relies on Knowing and the Known by Dewey and Bentley (1949).
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should help dispel any remaining confusion: “‘End’ is the name for a series of acts
taken collectively—like the term army. ‘Means’ is a name for the same series taken
distributively—like this soldier, that officer. To think of the end signifies to extend
and enlarge our view of the act to be performed” (p. 28).
The Deweyan approach to means and ends is part of a pragmatist emphasis on
experimentalism. Much of our day-to-day activity is governed by unreflexive action
in which we follow courses of action that are routine. Brewing the morning coffee,
taking a jog, scanning the daily headlines, and brushing one’s teeth are all actions
that typically involve a need for little or no reflection once they have been ingrained
(or embodied) as habit. But when routines or habits break down, one must then
consider the situation, examine what courses of action are possible, and then
experiment, that is, try something and see what happens. Dewey (1991 [1939], p.
220) characterizes this rupture as a moment when ‘there is something the matter,’
when there is some ‘trouble’ in an existing situation. When analyzed, this
‘something the matter’ is found to spring from the fact that there is something
lacking, wanting, in the existing situation as it stands, an absence that produces
conflict in the elements that do exist. Put another way, the failure of habit or the
breakdown of what Joas (1996, p. 161) calls “pre-reflected, practical ways” leads the
actor to reflect upon the situation and engage in a process of creatively constructing
a response, engaging in “creative syncretism” (Berk 2009; Berk and Galvan 2009).
Follett (1924, p. xv) sees such creativity as emerging from a “mystery moment.” The
impetus for action comes from finding that something is missing; “the urge is always
the lack” (p. 81). Such action and the experiences that come with it are akin to a
“dynamo station” (p. 85) that “generates new energy” (p. 137).
Follett’s “mystery moment” is akin to Addams’s (2002 [1902], p. 31) idea of
“perplexity.” In Democracy and Social Ethics, she presents the concept in the form
of a question: “Of what use is all this striving and perplexity?” Much of the rest of
the book contains the development of her answer. Addams argues that non-habitual
action stems from “perplexity.” Perplexity marks a break with convention and a
move toward a new, reconstructed understanding of the situation (Seigfried 2002,
pp. xxii–xxiii). For Addams (1893a, pp. 44–45), perplexity stems from “the mystery
and complexity of life” and leads to “the promptings that spring from growing
insight.” As Seigfried (2004, p. 191) points out, “Addams uses the perplexity that is
felt when our preconceptions are called into question by those differently situated as
a way to focus attention on the power disparities that, when ignored, undermine the
effectiveness of the experimental method. The notion of perplexity was central to
Addams’s understanding of what Hull-House was about: “a Settlement shares
the perplexities of its times and is never too dogmatic concerning the final
truth” (1961 [1910], p. 292). Dewey (1988 [1920], pp. 159–160) elaborates on
perplexity, pointing out that reconstruction is grounded in experience: “thinking
takes its departure from specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity
and trouble. Men do not, in their natural estate, think when they have no troubles
to cope with, no difficulties to overcome.” Perhaps the best current expression of
the experiential dimension of the pragmatist program is by Hacking (2007, p. 36),
who advocates “taking a look,” by which he means turning to “real life, real
knowledge, real expertise.” In other words, thinking and experience are
inextricably intertwined.
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But this is more than just trial and error. One must engage in what Dewey (2007
[1916], pp. 111–112) calls a “careful survey” involving “examination, inspection,
exploration, [and] analysis” of all those things that might help “define and clarify the
problem in hand.” It is also important to interrogate such a survey, “squaring with a
wider range of facts.” As Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2011 [in press]) point out,
“what [Dewey] envisioned was that habits could themselves be made more
intelligent, indeed, that not only intelligent habits but also habits of intelligence
could take root and thrive.” To be clear, this process does not and should not exist in
the ether. Nor is the process of reflective experience an end in itself; perplexity lays
the groundwork for what Dewey called “growth,” itself a process (not an endpoint).
Dewey (1988 [1922], p. 181) characterizes growth as a “continual process” of
“perfecting, maturing, refining.” In this social process, “improvement and progress,
rather than the static outcome and result, becomes the significant thing, [and] the end
is no longer a terminus or limit to be reached. It is the active process of transforming
the existent situation.” In the pragmatist conceptualization of non-habitual action,
then, perplexity and experimentation lead to growth, and this in turn fosters new
perplexities and new experimentation.
C. Wright Mills (1940) points out the potential limits to this process of
experimentation, growth, and creativity, particularly at the moment of rupture. In
essence, he argues that our actions should be understood as “situated” in specific
social contexts. When we experience moments of rupture, what Mills describes as
“situations back of questions” (905), we look for answers, that is, ways to move
forward. Mills (1940, p. 907) terms these answers “motives”: “As a word, a motive
tends to be one which is to the actor and to other members of a situation an
unquestioned answer to questions concerning social and lingual conduct.” In most
social situations, there is a fairly stable set of answers to questions arising during
moments of rupture. These conventions, what Mills calls “vocabularies of motive,”
are couched in language and provide a particular set of possible ways to respond in
moments of uncertainty and explain action after the fact (p. 906). “A stable motive is
an ultimate in justificatory conversation. The words that in a type situation will fulfill
this function are circumscribed by the vocabulary of motives acceptable for such
situations. Motives are accepted justifications for present, future, or past programs or
acts” (p. 907). A moment of rupture or questioning in a particular situation leads one
to look around and consider ways to move forward. But accounts of those ways are
often limited to the vocabulary of the particular institution or social space in which
the actor finds herself. People tell stories of their actions in the vocabulary available
to them, and this vocabulary is the product of social relations.
We see in what follows that the social provision practices at Hull-House can be
understood as pragmatist through-and-through. What does this mean? We can see in
general terms that residents were experimenters who above all needed to be what
Addams (1961 [1910], p. 85) calls “flexible” both in practices and in goals. As noted
pragmatist George Herbert Mead (1907, p. 110) points out, “It is the privilege of the
social settlement to be a part of its own immediate community, to approach its
conditions with no preconceptions, to be the exponents of no dogma or fixed rules of
conduct, but to find out what the problems of this community are and as a part of it to
help toward their solution.” Pragmatism as a process is grounded in perplexity, and we
can see that residents were able to break from convention and to strive for a new,
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reconstructed understanding of situations they encountered. Perplexity laid the
groundwork for growth, which was not in and of itself an endpoint but rather a
process of winnowing ideas, or following Mills, a search among available
vocabularies of motive. If one can speak of a “goal” in this process, it is
transformation. Hull-House was home to such a process of transformation. Perplexity
and experimentation led to growth, and this in turn fostered new perplexities and new
experimentation. While concepts such as rupture, perplexity, experimentation, and
growth might be difficult to operationalize and measure, this does not mean that they
did not take place at Hull-House. At a minimum, and even if they defy precise
measurement, we will see that these concepts admirably serve as heuristic devices for
making sense of what Hull-House residents actually did to help people.
Social provision and charity organization in Chicago
Before Jane Addams came to the city, Chicago social welfare was a patchwork affair.
Local governments at the town and municipal level provided limited “outdoor” (inhome) and “indoor” (poorhouse) relief, but the brunt of the burden was carried by
private institutions such as churches and relief societies, with limited coordination by
State Boards of Charity.8 These institutions simply did not possess the capacity to
respond adequately to the needs of the day, and what response they did provide did not
seem to be particularly effective. In Chicago, voluntary associations led the charge to
help those in need during this time. Specifically, the Chicago Relief and Aid Society
(CRAS) was the most significant social provision organization, dating from the time of
the Great Fire of 1871.9 The “Katrina” of its day, the Great Fire left homeless over
one-third of the city’s 300,000 residents and destroyed more than 18,000 buildings,
including the entire downtown and business district (Sawislak 1995, p. 2). The city
was simply not prepared for the devastation that followed the fire; the lack of public
capacity forced the state to turn to the private sector for help. In the wake of the fire,
the CRAS was given unprecedented authority by the Mayor of Chicago to administer
aid funds that were pouring in from all over the world (Flanagan 2002, pp. 13–14).
Almost overnight, the CRAS grew from a small organization into the most significant
charity provider in the city, and perhaps the nation. By 1884, the CRAS had cemented
its position as the charity heavyweight in Chicago.10 It had a new building and enough
money on hand that it did not need to engage in fundraising.
The CRAS advocated methods that can be understood as grounded in the
principles of scientific philanthropy and charity organization. While there is not
room in this article to present data supporting this characterization of CRAS
practice,11 I contend, following that CRAS methods possessed an “economistic”
logic. By economistic, I follow Bourdieu (1990, pp. 112–113) in identifying a
8
See Brown (1941), McCarthy (1982), and Mayer (1978) for overviews of nineteenth century charity in
Chicago.
9
For a discussion of the origins of the CRAS, see Nelson (1966).
10
This is not to say that the CRAS was the only game in town. There were a number of other civic and
religious organizations doing charity at this time but the CRAS was the best funded and most influential.
11
See Schneiderhan (2008) for a discussion of the CRAS and its relations with Jane Addams, Hull-House,
and charity organization in Chicago.
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
599
particular logic of practice grounded in the principles of the free market; that which
is not commodified, that which has no price, “finds no place in its analyses.” We can
understand economism as a term that describes a regularity in the way of helping
people that is conditional, and is also moralistic in the sense that it divides the
worthy from the unworthy in determining who needs help. Turning to C. Wright
Mills, we can understand the CRAS in terms of its influence on the social context of
helping, in particular how it created and supported available “vocabularies of
motive.” As presented above, in most social situations there is a fairly stable set of
answers (what Mills calls motives) to questions that arise during moments when
people are not sure what to do. The economistic language of the CRAS provided
actors in the field of social provision, whether individuals or organizations, with
what Mills calls “justifications” for moving forward when they were uncertain about
the best ways of helping others. In essence, actors were constrained by the lack of
any serious competitors to the stable conventions of the CRAS. As a result, these
actors (much like the CRAS) typically advocated the promotion of self-help,
suspicion of potential fraud, and work testing to weed out the lazy. Hull-House, from
its inception, could not have been more different.
Hull-House beginnings
Jane Addams first got the idea to start Hull-House—a social settlement—after a visit
in the spring of 1888 to Toynbee Hall, one of the first and well known of the socalled settlement houses in England.12 The early settlements in the United States13
were modeled after Toynbee Hall; Jane Addams, for example, visited the famous
settlement house and wrote of its importance in crystallizing her own mission to help
remedy social ills in America (1961 [1910], pp. 56–58). Toynbee Hall, founded in
1883, was situated in one of the poorest urban neighborhoods of East London.
Settlement workers, also known as “residents,” lived right alongside the poor. In the
case of Toynbee Hall, their primary task was to provide education and culture to
their less fortunate neighbors, as a sort of “university for working people.”14 But
Toynbee was more than this; it also offered an agenda for reform that included
12
See Briggs and Macartney (1984), and Meacham (1987) for comprehensive histories of Toynbee Hall.
See Woods (1892) for a contemporary history of the origins of Toynbee Hall written from an American’s
point of view.
13
Scholars have exhaustively studied the emergence of the settlement house in the United States (Carson
1990; Crocker 1992; Davis 1984, 2000 [1973]). Neighborhood Guild, the first American settlement, was
established in 1886 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Including Addams’s Hull-House, founded in
1889, only four settlements were founded in America before 1890. By 1900 there were approximately 100
in operation and by 1910 there were about 400 (Trattner 1999, p. 175). Chicago was home to 16 at its
peak, most notably Hull-House and Graham Taylor’s Chicago Commons. The American settlement had a
strong religious foundation, yet remained decidedly non-sectarian. However, it is important to be cautious
with such general descriptions, as settlement houses were not all the same. Similarly, it would be easy to
romanticize the settlement movement and provide it with more uniformity than it actually possessed; some
operated more as religious convents, particularly in smaller cities, while others were closer to the HullHouse “model” (if we can speak of such a thing), pursuing social provision in the spirit of the Gospels.
14
Jane Addams, “Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall,” December 3, 1891, [address delivered to the Chicago
Woman’s Club], reel 46-0480-0496, the Jane Addams Memorial Collection (JAMC), Special Collections,
The University Library, The University of Illinois at Chicago.
600
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higher wages, job training, public health services, and better working conditions. In
a letter to her sister dated June 18, 1888, Addams mentioned her visit to
the Toynbee Hall in the East End. It is a community of University men who
live there. […] It is so free from ‘professional doing good’ so matter of factly
sincere and so productive of good results in its classes and libraries that it
seems perfectly ideal.15
The philosophical grounding of reform efforts at Toynbee was inspired in large
part by Matthew Arnold, who harbored the “hope of transforming England into a
nation of ‘sweetness and light’”(Meacham 1987, p. 10). This transformation would
take place through participation of the Victorian middle-class in the realm of social
provision. T. H. Green, a philosopher at Balliol College of Oxford University, and
Benjamin Jowett were also major influences on the genesis of Toynbee. Arnold
Toynbee was a student of Jowett and Green at Balliol, and his career as an economic
historian was deeply influenced by their ideas.16 Samuel Barnett, the warden of
Toynbee Hall, was also taught by the pair and was inspired by Green’s ideas on the
importance of “community” and “individual connection,” as well as his emphasis on
action over ivory-tower discussions (Meacham 1987: pp. 11–16).17 There is a
pragmatist dimension to Green’s ideas, most notably in his talk of fostering
community (think Deweyan “growth”) and social action (think Jamesian “cash
value” or the “difference that makes a difference”). Equally important, there was an
emphasis on the reciprocal nature of relationships between residents of Toynbee Hall
and their neighbors (Briggs and Macartney 1984, p. 5). Taken in total, these
principles (and their manifest practices) can be understood as possible important
influences on Addams’s approach at Hull-House. In fact, an early visitor to HullHouse termed it “a Toynbee Hall experiment in Chicago.”18
Addams summarizes up what she viewed as the overall logic of the settlement: “It
aims, in a measure, to develop whatever of social life its neighborhood may afford,
to focus and give form to that life, to bring to bear upon it the results of cultivation
and training”(1961 [1910], p. 83). Addams was energized by the Toynbee project
and its operations, and her letters show that she was subsequently filled with a new
sense of purpose. There is no indication that Addams sat down and made an
itemized list of practices that she wanted to export from Toynbee Hall to the United
States. Rather, it appears that, upon leaving Toynbee Hall, she said to herself, “I
want to do this.” But the “this” was not well defined as an end, if it was an end at all.
15
Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, June 14, 1888, Haldeman-Julius Family Papers,
JAMC (reel 2-0968-0973), Special Collections, The University Library, The University of Illinois at
Chicago.
16
Toynbee, who lived among the poor in East London for a time, was the inspiration for the name and
general location of the settlement. The naming was prompted in part by Toynbee’s death in 1883. See
Briggs and Macartney (1984) Chapter One (“The Victorian Prelude”) for a more in-depth discussion of the
intellectual foundations of Toynbee Hall.
17
In a reverse of Jane Addams’s story, the catalyst for Barnett’s career in helping others seems to have
been a trip to America, where he saw the influence of education on freed African-Americans. See
Meacham (1987), Ch. 2 for more detail.
18
Nora Marks, “Two Women’s Work: The Misses Addams and Starr Astonish the West Siders,” Chicago
Daily Tribune (May 19, 1890): 1–2. This is one of the first substantive journalistic accounts of practice at
Hull-House.
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
601
Pragmatism can again be helpful here, for we can understand Addams’s visit to
Toynbee Hall as a critical moment in her own social trajectory, or what the
pragmatists would call a moment of rupture. Her comfortable life as an educated,
upper-middle class woman in Illinois (and the daughter of a prominent Republican)
was upended as she came face-to-face with a way of helping that was new to her. It
did not fit with her experiences with how people were helped at her home or in her
neighborhood, and as such, she was forced to reflect. Addams would likely have
agreed with this assessment. Writing in general terms of the time leading up to the
founding of Hull-House, she likens it to a period in which she formulated “her
convictions” and begin the process of reducing these convictions into “a plan of
action”(1961 [1910], p. 41). She also is clear that her “period of mere passive
receptivity had come to an end” (p. 57). She was ready to act. It should come as no
surprise, then, that it was at this time that she began to plan (with her friend Ellen
Gates Starr, who visited Toynbee Hall in the summer of 1888) to found a settlement
house in Chicago.19
Addams and Starr began making the rounds in Chicago in late 1888, presenting
their ideas to various social provision organizations and to the press.20 It is clear
from Addams’s letters that she was gaining an education in the realities of life for the
poor in Chicago, particularly in respect to the mismatch between services and needs.
For example, she wrote to her sister Alice of a nine-year old Italian boy she had
helped place in the Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital. 21 The father was “delighted
with the house and the assurance that the child should always have enough to eat.”
Addams was amazed that the hospital had vacancies, calling the situation “a curious
instance of the need of communication between the benevolent people at one end of
the city and the poverty at the other.” Addams and Starr actively tried to understand
particularities of poverty and social provision in Chicago, visiting the Clybourne
Avenue mission and the Armour mission, among others, to see what kind of services
they provided. They seemed to pay particular attention to the missions’ kindergarten
and library programs as well as their lecture courses (Davis 2000 [1973], p. 54).
The two women seemed from the outset to understand that there would be a
reciprocal element to their relations with the poor, as can be seen in an interview
with them several months before the opening of Hull-House: “One of these smooth
talkers [Starr or Addams] let fall the astonishing proposition that there are many
educated and society girls and ladies who need the tasks a great city offers as much
as the humbler classes need the intervention of high circles. ‘They need the poor as
much as the poor need them’—a proposition that no one will hasten to deny.”22 In
19
The reader may notice that what follows privileges the role of Addams over that of her friend Ellen
Gates Starr in the founding and subsequent expansion of Hull-House. This is in keeping with nearly all
accounts of Hull-House, which portray Starr as someone who, while intimate with Addams, faded into the
background as Hull-House (and Addams) gained prominence.
20
One of the ways in which they seem to have made connections with other social provision organizations
was through the Chicago Women’s Club, of which Addams and Starr became members in April 1889. For
an example of their early press, see D. Swing 1889 (June 8). “A New Social Movement.” p. 4 in the
Chicago Evening Journal.
21
Letter from Jane Addams to Mary Catherine Addams Linn, April 1, 1889, Swarthmore College Peace
Collection, JAMC (reel 2-1050-1061), Special Collections, The University Library, The University of
Illinois at Chicago.
22
Swing, D. 1889 (June 8). “A New Social Movement.” p. 4 in the Chicago Evening Journal.
602
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the words of Dorothea Moore (1897, p. 640), a contemporary of Addams writing
about social relations at Hull-House (in one of the first editions of the American
Journal of Sociology), “the exchange [was] the vital thing.” This is not a small point,
for the idea of help at Hull-House was a two-way exchange in which the residents
were thought to be “helped” as much as their neighbors. Addams (1893b, p. 1) is
clear that the process of helping is two-way: “the dependence of classes on each
other is reciprocal.” Seigfried (2009, p. 42) expands on this point: “It was the
privileged members of society who were also in need of enlightenment [help] of the
sort that those supposedly less well-off were uniquely in a position to offer them.”
In relational terms, Hull-House was thus understood (from its inception) as a
crucible for development and nurturing of reciprocal relations between its residents
and the members of the Nineteenth Ward. The relations, not the structure, were what
mattered. But Hull-House was not only a locus of relations between people; it was
also a relational entity in its own right. It emerged in relation to social forces and
institutions in Chicago and elsewhere. It emerged in relation to Toynbee Hall. It
emerged in relation to the CRAS. We can see from the brief presentation above that
Toynbee Hall was an early influence on Addams’s impulses to found Hull-House. In
short, while Addams was influenced by Toynbee Hall, she went her own way with
Hull-House in Chicago. She also appears to have gone her own way in avoiding any
strong initial ties with the CRAS. As indicated above, Addams and Starr became
members of the Chicago Women’s Club, an organization of elite women who would
have no doubt have made their new members aware of the CRAS and its methods.
But unlike the Barnetts, who tied Toynbee Hall to the economistic approach of the
London Charity Society (Briggs and Macartney 1984, p. 6), Addams created no such
ties to the CRAS. Whether a conscious decision or an oversight, the lack of ties
between Hull-House and the CRAS would leave Hull-House completely unfettered
in its infancy. And this freedom would enable it to develop ways of helping through
relations with neighbors rather than through ties with existing organizations of social
provision.
During the spring of 1889 Addams and Starr began to search for a place to settle,
surveying a number of what they described as “slums” and eventually deciding on a
house on Halsted Street in the Nineteenth Ward of Chicago. They signed a lease in
May 1889 to rent the bulk of the house (part of it was storage space for a school
furniture factory) and, over the summer, Addams paid $1,000 out of her pocket to
renovate the second floor (Knight 2005, pp. 195–196). They had found a location, a
laboratory of sorts for experimenting with ideas to help others. The next section
provides some depth, showing what those experiments initially entailed.
Early years at Hull-House
Jane Addams recorded the opening of Hull-House with a simple notation in her
diary: “Came into residence Sept. 18, 1889.”23 But what then? How did Addams and
Starr begin the daunting task of trying to help people in a neighborhood where they
23
Jane Addams’s Diary, 1889–1890. Swarthmore College Peace Collection, JAMC (reel 29–0101),
Special Collections, The University Library, The University of Illinois at Chicago.
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
603
knew no one and were seen as outsiders? This was certainly a moment of rupture, in
the pragmatist sense, for it was unlikely that either woman had any habits or
“vocabulary” on which they could rely in this new situation. They were creators.
Jackson (2001, p. 11) aptly describes their early efforts: “there was in the earliest
undertakings of Hull-House a touch of the artist’s enthusiasm.” Like anyone moving
to a new place, they started by trying to meet their neighbors. In the words of a
journalist reporting on Hull-House several months before it opened:
It is not the design of these toilers to open doors to all comers. The locality is
to be canvassed; acquaintances are to be formed; those persons, boys, girls,
men and women are to be selected who give some hope to the educator, and of
this class is the membership to be composed. Many forlorn homes will thus
stand related by a son or a daughter, or by both, to this new and superior
house.24
The making of these aforementioned acquaintances was no small task, as
residents of the neighborhood around Hull-House did not understand why these two
upper class women would want to live in such poor neighborhood if they did not
have to! In the first few weeks, many of the visitors to Hull-House were children,
who did not hold the same suspicions of Addams and Starr. Early letters from
Addams and Starr show that they focused their initial efforts on these children,
organizing two boys’ clubs that met every Tuesday evening. 25 Addams specifically
mentions this early focus on children in a letter to her sister Alice, written just
3 weeks after Hull-House opened. Their strategy began with the establishment of a
kindergarten class for 24 neighborhood children, with 70 additional children on a
waiting list (Knight 2005, p. 204). Starr was the teacher, and the initial hours were
from nine to noon each weekday. Jenny Dow, a former student of Starr’s, soon came
to live at Hull-House and took over the kindergarten classes. Dow clearly seemed to
feel that the strategy of getting to know the neighbors and their children was
working, as evidenced by an excerpt of an article she wrote several months after
Hull-House opened:
The most interesting part of the work cannot be written about. It is the simple
and natural way in which the neighbors bring their joys and sorrows to this
hospitable home. Indeed, one feels not that Miss Addams and Miss Starr have
given up anything to live there, but that their lives are richer and better for
these demands on their sympathies.26
Hull-House also provided day care, later called the “crèche,” for 25 children each
day. For a nominal fee, parents (typically women) left their children first thing in the
morning, comforted by the knowledge that each child would be given a snack, toys,
and remarkably, a bath and a nap in his or her own bed (Brown 2004, p. 233; Moore
1897, p. 632). Addams herself was not averse to rolling up her sleeves and helping
with childcare. When Florence Kelley, one of Hull-House’s more renowned
24
[Rev.] David Swing, “A New Social Movement,” Chicago Evening Journal (June 8, 1889): 4.
In particular, see Addams’s letter to her sister of 10/8/1889 and Starr’s lengthy letters to her family in
November 1889. JAMC (reel 2, 1085–1109).
26
Jenny Dow, “The Chicago Toynbee Hall,” Unity (March 15, 1890), Hull-House Scrapbook I, JAMC,
Special Collections, The University Library, The University of Illinois at Chicago.
25
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residents, first came to Hull-House, it was Addams who greeted her at the door,
“holding on her left arm a singularly unattractive, fat, pudgy baby” while at the same
time “hindered in her movements by a super-energetic kindergarten child left by its
mother while she went to a sweatshop for a bundle of cloaks to be finished” (Kelley
1986, p. 77).
While their ideas about bringing art and high culture to the community were
somewhat fixed, there was no such stasis in their thoughts about helping; as Addams
(1894, p. 112) points out, “We had no definite theories to start with.” So they
listened and they learned. The point here is that it is not simply enough to look at the
early years of Hull-House and to say that Addams and the other residents wanted to
help people (the end or goal) and that they therefore chose particular means to that
end. The data show that they often had no idea what they were doing and pursued
much simpler “ends-in-view” like meeting a particular family or making sure a
mother had access to laundry facilities. And these interactions were often learning
experiences, leading to new ideas that might be tried out (new ends-in-view).
From her initial relations with neighbors, Addams understood full well that one of
the biggest obstacles facing children was hunger and nutrition. Mothers (not fathers)
who worked during the day were able to purchase meal tickets for their children to
eat at Hull-House (while the mother was at work.) Addams (1894, p. 107) saw the
meals as performing “the function of a truant officer in keeping them at school, for
no school implies no dinner. The House has had the sympathetic and enthusiastic cooperation of the principal of the Polk street public school.” Providing the women in
the neighborhood with adequate childcare was not an endpoint or outcome to be
measured. It was a redefined situation that brought to light new perplexities in terms
of women’s needs. It is the interactions between Addams (and the other residents)
and neighbors that led to new situations, such as the provision of skills training
classes or the establishment of cooperative living.
But Hull-House was not simply a daycare center, a kitchen, or a meeting space for
social clubs. Addams emphasized the vocational and practical dimensions of
activities for children, pointing out “girls are put into kitchen-garden, house-keeping,
cooking and sewing classes, and are allowed the range of the house to teach them
what it may.”27 Boys, too, benefited from what Hull-House had to provide. Each
Tuesday afternoon the “Schoolboys’ Club” met to choose books from the
“circulating library” at Hull-House (a rotating selection of books from the Chicago
public library), which they then read aloud. There were a number of instructional
classes for boys each evening, ranging from “what to do in emergencies, [to] simple
chemical experiments.”28
The initial focus on children did not mean that Addams and the other residents
ignored the needs of adult residents of the neighborhood. In fact, the connection with
children seems to have been generative in providing Addams and Starr access to
adults, for the former began to visit neighborhood homes during the evenings. It had
become apparent early on that daytime visits were disruptive for women in the midst
27
Jane Addams, “Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall,” December 3, 1891, [address delivered to the Chicago
Woman’s Club], p. 15, JAMC (reel 46-0480-0496), Special Collections, The University Library, The
University of Illinois at Chicago.
28
Nora Marks, “Two Women’s Work: The Misses Addams and Starr Astonish the West Siders,” in
Chicago Tribune May 19, 1890.
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
605
of housework (or away at work), so Addams and Starr usually went at night when
the adults were typically home; they also tried to bring along a male volunteer, as
they found that this set the neighborhood men at ease (Brown 2004, p. 240). It is
likely during these visits that they learned about some neighborhood household
needs, for Hull-House soon began to share its laundry facilities with women who
needed them.29
Addams and Starr may also have determined that members of the neighborhood
needed a social space for talking through their problems and perplexities, and for
making sense of the world; a weekly Social Science Club (attended mostly by men)
was started up and provided a forum where one could take up a political or social
issue of the day.30 As Brown (2004, p. 243) points out, “This was to be a place
where labor activists, businessmen, civic leaders, and working people could openly
debate the merits of capitalism, socialism, the single tax, the tariff, [or] the still lively
matter of the Haymarket riot.” There were college extension classes for adults during
the evenings; like many of the programs at Hull-House, “the college extension
courses grew […] from an informal origin. The first class met as guests of the
residents. As the classes became larger and more numerous and the object of the
newcomers more definitely that of acquisition of some special knowledge the
informality of the social relation was necessarily less” (Addams 1894, p. 99). Notice
that the impulse for more education and the program to meet this demand emerged
out of relations between Hull-House residents and neighbors. The demand for
knowledge on the part of neighborhood residents may have also contributed to the
idea for a summer program for women at Rockford College in Illinois starting in
1891 (Brown 2004; Herndon 1892, pp. 233–234). The program took place over
4 weeks at Rockford Seminary campus (Addams’s alma mater). It offered a liberal
arts curriculum to working-class women who took extension classes at Hull-House.
Over 90 women attended during the first 2 weeks, supported by funds raised from
Rockford residents (Knight 2005, p. 225).
The spirit of helping that infused the programs mentioned above may have
emerged from interactions with those whom Addams and the other residents wanted
to help, returning us to Addams’s initial idea about the generative potential of
reciprocal relations between neighbors and residents at Hull-House:
A woman for whom the writer [Addams] had long tried in vain to find work
failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was secured at last.
Upon investigation it transpired that a neighbor further down the street was
taken ill, that the children ran for the family friend, who went of course, saying
simply when reasons for her non-appearance were demanded, “It broke me
heart to leave the place, but what could I do?” (p. 14).
While one can imagine Addams’s first reaction as frustration that the woman had
thrown away the long-sought job, her reflective response was to see how hard it is to
participate in the labor market—in other words, she learned, changed, and grew in
29
Ibid.
Jane Addams, “Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall,” p. 13. Toynbee Hall, which had its own Social Science
Club, might have had a strong influence on the development of the Hull-House version. For more on this,
see Knight (2005, p. 204).
30
606
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
the exchange. 31 But it did not take long for her to realize how hard it was to
participate in the labor market. Addams was also clear about the benefit that these
workers would accrue from interacting with those in residence at Hull-House:
“[Hull-House would] bring them in contact with a better class of Americans.”32 This
comment, while perhaps causing the reader to cringe, should not take away from the
fact that Addams was brought into social relations with people who changed her
understanding of the world. The Chicago labor market was brutal for the average
worker and Addams “got it” right away. But then she also came to see (from the
“lesser class”) that ties with friends and family trump those to the labor market
(hence the “of course” in the above quote). The above example is one of a number of
social relations that gave texture to Addams’s understanding of the complexity of
trying to keep a job in nineteenth century Chicago. It was not just a simple, blackand-white matter of whether someone is able-bodied and willing to work. In other
words, Addams and the other residents may have learned how to truly understand
and thus help their neighbors through their day-to-day relations with those same
neighbors. What Addams wrote about the hierarchical relationship between resident
and neighbor belies the reciprocal and equal exchange of knowledge and Deweyan
growth of pragmatist intelligence that obtained among all parties.
Beyond helping neighborhood children and adults, Hull-House developed a
reputation for helping what Brown (2004, p. 246) calls the “slightly marginal” from
across the city (as well as those who had just newly arrived). There is some dispute
among scholars as to whether or not this reputation was deserved, particularly in the
case of immigrants and people of color. Addams claimed it was easier to work with
first-generation city residents, that is, with those who in her words were “direct from
the soil.”33 This may have been the case with immigrants, but it was not always so
with black Americans. There is a strand of thinking, what Lengermann and Niebrugge
(2007) call “the critical history narrative,”34 that attempts to see the relationship
between Hull-House residents and those who might be seen as part of the “slightly
marginal” group mentioned by Brown (for example, immigrants people of color) from
the perspective of those being helped. Deegan (2002) provides what is perhaps the
definitive and final word on race in the context of Hull-House. She talks of the
existence of a “color line […] that effectively made the Hull-House life and worldview
neither particularly comfortable nor welcoming to black Americans” (p. 38). And
Deegan (2010) is clear that Addams’s was ahead of her time in terms of understanding
the struggles of non-whites against oppression. The fact that whites and non-whites
were treated differently is not particularly remarkable given the time and context. Most
institutions in the United States engaged in the same sorts of distinctions. But it does
urge caution in romanticizing the practices at Hull-House and points to a distinction
present in the practices at Hull-House. The settlement house did things differently
from economistic organizations like the CRAS, but it also seems to have contributed
to the maintenance of a racial power structure in the city. But whether or not there was
a color line or condescension toward people of color, the practical emphasis was on
31
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for help with the writing in this section of the article.
Ibid., p. 13.
33
Ibid., p. 12.
34
For interested in the intersection of Hull-House practice and race, see in particular Lengermann and
Niebrugge (1998), Lissak (1989), and Lasch-Quinn (1993).
32
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
607
cultivation and growth in a pragmatist spirit; it was a process of mutual learning
through engagement with people who were different.
An example of the difference (along color lines) between the approaches of HullHouse and the economistic CRAS can be seen through a comparison of the stories of
Henry Standing Bear and a struggling band of Cherokee musicians. In June of 1891,
Henry Standing Bear, the son of a Sioux chief, came into residence at Hull-House
(Brown 2004, p. 246). He had been trying to return home from (assimilation) school
and had run out of money. Addams took him in, and he stayed at Hull-House for over
6 months. This treatment stands in sharp contrast to the approach on the matter of
“Cherokee Indians [sic],” considered at a meeting of the CRAS in April 1893.35 The
Cherokees “had come to the city with a view of giving concerts in Churches, but who
had utterly failed in their expectations and were now in the city, entirely stranded and
unable to return to their homes.” The Board voted to allocate $50 to help them,
“provided that sum would enable them to leave the city and reach their homes.” It is
worth pointing out that, during the early 1830s, nearly the entire Cherokee nation had
been forcibly relocated from Georgia and the Carolinas to poor-quality land in
Oklahoma. The minutes do not say from whence the Cherokees came, but they were
sent back there by the CRAS. As the minutes indicate, “the Indians were sent home
(with considerable difficulty).”36 The contrast in practice could not be clearer: HullHouse opened its doors while the CRAS turned people away.
The opportunities for relations between neighbors and residents increased as HullHouse continued to expand its programs—and its physical size through the
construction of new buildings. Five public baths were constructed at the rear of
the house and were in use nearly all the time (Knight 2005, p. 237). Twelve new
showers were added shortly after the baths when the new gymnasium was built in
1893 (Brown 2004:238), and these too were in constant use. Addams and the other
residents were adherents of Froebel’s theory of the value of “creative play” and
thought the community would benefit from a safe place to play, while Hull-House
residents would benefit from the new connection to children (and their parents). So
Hull-House residents went on the attack, shaming a neighboring slum-lord into
providing rent-free use of a plot of land, demolishing the “decrepit housing” on it,
and building an immensely popular public playground (Brown 2004, p. 261). At
Addams’s urging, the city assigned a police officer to patrol the playground to ensure
the safety of the children; he reported to her each day prior to his rounds (Sunderland
1893, p. 401). Hull-House expanded the day nursery program to a nearby cottage,
allowing for, in the words of one visitor to Hull-House, “an average attendance of 40
children, ranging in age from 6 weeks to 6 years, the majority, however, babies in
arms. On the day of our visit 44 of these little ones were being carefully cared for
while their mothers were away at work” (p. 401). One can imagine the children’s 44
mothers arriving at Hull-House, exhausted from working hard for little pay, and
grateful for the support and sympathetic ear of the residents. The increasing
connection between working women and Hull-House residents may have contrib35
April 10, 1893 Chicago Relief and Aid Society Meeting Minutes Volume 2, 1887–1909, p. 184, Chicago
Historical Society, United Charities of Chicago Collection (UCCC).
36
May 8, 1893 CRAS Board Meeting. Chicago Relief and Aid Society Meeting Minutes Volume 2, 1887–
1909, UCCC.
608
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
uted to the emergence of the “Jane Club” in May of 1892. It was a cooperative
boarding club for women that provided room, board, heat, light, and other necessary
services for three dollars per week (Knight 2005, p. 247). Addams provided the first
month of rent free to women who joined the club (Addams 1894, p. 102). It was a
rousing success.
There were failures at Hull-House, too. In 1890, Hull-House closed its doors for
the summer so that Starr and Addams could visit friends and family and spend the
hot months in cooler temperatures. No such luck for the other residents of the
neighborhood. In this sense, Hull-House was similar to the CRAS, which also
routinely shut down its operations during the summer months.37 Of course, the needs
of the neighborhood did not go away during this time and it seems reasonable to
submit that some people who needed help did not get it because Hull-House was
closed down. Then there is the infamous story in 20 Years at Hull-House of the baby
with the cleft palate (1961 [1910], p. 72). Unwanted by his mother, he was kept at
Hull-House for several weeks, but upon returning home, soon died of neglect.
There is also the example of the “Diet Kitchen,” also known as the “New England
Kitchen.” Based on the latest East-Coast scientific thinking on proper diet, it
provided meals for the sick and for those in need of good nutrition.38 There were
also cooking classes for neighborhood women to learn how to make nutritious meals
(see Fig. 1). The opening of the Diet Kitchen was celebrated by having elite Chicago
women taste the food:
Miss Adams of Hull house opened yesterday the novel little kitchen attached to
the place. [it] was filled with members of the Woman’s club, who tasted of the
delicate palatables cooked on strictly scientific principles. This culinary
apartment, which is placed at the rear and adjacent to the coffee house is
patterned after the famous New England kitchen which was organized by Mrs.
Ellen G. Richards. Mrs. Richards for 2 years studied the best and cheapest way
to cook. She has reduced her principles to a science and cooking utensils have
been made for the purpose. There are six Aladdin ovens invented by Edward
Atkinson of Boston. These are covered with asbestos on the outside and lined
with tin on the inside. The heat comes from a lamp. The sides are about an inch
thick. In addition to this there are half-jacket steam kettles, and a steam plant in
the yard. The soups are cooked in these kettles and none of the steam escapes.
Every atom of nutrition is conserved […] The object is to bring nutritious food
within reach of those who are not able to pay extravagant prices.39
The Diet Kitchen was a complete bust, as we can see in Addams’s own words:
“We did not reckon, however, with the wide diversity in nationality and inherited
37
Just 2 years later, in 1892, Addams would join a group that was extremely critical of the CRAS practice
of closing its doors during the summer. On the CRAS summer closings, see (for example) the 4/5/1890
CRAS Board of Directors meeting, UCCC. On Addams’s criticism of the CRAS, see the March 7, 1892
CRAS Board Meeting, UCCC.
38
There appears to be some confusion as to when the Diet Kitchen actually began. The flyer in Fig. 1
clearly shows that some form of the Diet Kitchen existed in 1891, but, according to the newspaper account
below and Brown (2004), it did not open until 1893.
39
“Hull House Kitchen Opened,” Chicago Record (August 24, 1893).
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
609
Fig. 1 Diet Kitchen Flyer. (Jane Addams Collection, Rockford College Archives, Rockford College,
Rockford, Illinois. This flyer was included in an unlabeled folder of Hull-House pamphlets.)
tastes, and while we sold a certain amount of the carefully prepared soups and stews
in the neighboring factories–a sale that has steadily increased throughout the years–
and were also patronized by a few households, perhaps the neighborhood estimate
was best summed up by the woman who frankly confessed, that the food was
certainly nutritious, but that she didn’t like to eat what was nutritious, that she liked
to eat ‘what she’d ruther’”(1961 [1910], p. 87). In short, nobody liked the food. So,
shortly after its creation, it was converted to a profitable coffee house (with
borrowed money) and provided coffee and hot lunches to neighborhood residents
(Brown 2004, p. 261). Again turning to Addams, it is clear that she saw something
new and unanticipated emerging with the coffee house: “If the dietetics were
appreciated but slowly, the social value of the coffee-house and the gymnasium,
which were in the same building, were quickly demonstrated. At that time the saloon
halls were the only places in the neighborhood where the immigrant could hold his
social gatherings” (1961 [1910], p. 87).
What happened? Addams and the other residents tried to implement a system that
they believed (in paternalistic fashion) would be good for the neighborhood and that
was based on the most current thinking in the field of nutritional science. But in this
instance, they learned from their failure and the perplexity it engendered, leading to
the creation of a different venture, the coffee house, which was a success both in
terms of providing healthy, affordable meals and offering a place for socializing. In
other words, community growth was a result. Addams (1894, p. 99) herself explains
how such a process of relational experimentalism worked: “All the details were left
for the demands of the neighborhood to determine, and each department has grown
from a discovery made through natural and reciprocal social relations.” Thus, the
Diet Kitchen was an end-in-view that became a means to another end-in-view (the
coffee shop), which was itself a means to a number of other ends-in-view, and so on.
The success or failure of the various programs (like the Diet Kitchen) at HullHouse cannot be laid solely at the feet of Addams, for in spite of her dominant role
610
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
at Hull-House, she empowered those she was helping to participate in decisionmaking whenever possible. For example, during after-school classes, Addams (1894,
p. 106) asked children to be leaders and to decide what these classes “might entail.”
In addition, the residents, all women for the first 3 years, engaged in a form of
collective decision-making that was quite democratic.40 Addams was “head
resident” (Brown 2004, p. 230) but actively encouraged other residents to take
ownership of the decision-making process. Simply put, there was contestation in
decision-making, for Addams did not surround herself with meek and mildmannered women who would acquiesce to her own way of doing things. On the
contrary, some of the most formidable, innovative, and energetic women in
nineteenth-century United States history were residents of Hull-House There are
very few data on the early residents’ meetings at Hull-House, but an examination of
what data do exist shows that the meetings were a space for deliberation on
perplexities and over new ideas. Decisions on who would reside at Hull-House, what
the ideal gender composition of the resident group should be (15 women and 10 men
in late 1893), whether or not to partner with various social provision organizations,
and what Hull-House’s policy toward relief should be (it varied) were all routinely
taken up by the group.41 The meetings also served as a place for residents to get
information; there were usually presentations on the goings-on at Hull-House, as
well as reports on new charity projects in the city.
Experimentation and creativity can also be seen as regularities in the practice of
decision-making at Hull-House. Addams fully embraced a collective process of
deliberation that provided an inclusive forum where ideas, information, and reasons
could be presented and thought through. The residents’ meetings served as a space to
access information in order to address perplexities (searching for new vocabularies
of motive, if you will); there were usually presentations on the goings on at HullHouse, as well as reports on new charity projects in the city. The residents, all
women for the first 3 years, engaged in a form of collective decision-making that we
might understand as pragmatist. In the spirit of pragmatist deliberation, the focus at
Hull-House was on “developing moral capability, character, habits, transactional
openness and concern to understand and aid others as well as oneself, on greater
inclusiveness of differences” (Green 2006, p. 314). The idea, while not expressly
stated, was to foster the development of pragmatist intelligence in what Dewey
(1988 [1926], pp. 325–232) might have described as a community effort to grow,
whether within Hull-House, throughout the neighborhood, or perhaps (eventually)
across the city as a whole. This community project was a “work of conversion of the
physical and organic phase of associated behavior [Hull-House residents meeting
and getting to know neighbors] into a community of action saturated and regulated
by mutual interest in shared meanings, consequences which are translated into ideas
and desired objects by symbols [generated through communication]” (p. 331).
While early media accounts often made connections between Toynbee Hall and
Hull-House, it is clear that even from its founding, Hull-House was different,
40
See Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895), p. 229.
Hull House Collection, Special Collections, The University Library, The University of Illinois at
Chicago, 32–295: Residents’ Meetings Records Book (beginning January 1893), pp. 29–82. For a
microfilm copy, see JAMC (reel 50).
41
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
611
particularly along gender lines. The women of Hull-House were a far cry from the
sherry-toting Oxford and Cambridge men who treated Toynbee Hall as a social club
as much as a vehicle for helping others. Hull-House did not resemble Toynbee Hall
in terms of its hierarchical and paternalistic approach to social relations with
neighbors. Addams and the other early residents were representative of American
society’s untapped potential—women. As Skocpol (1992) points out, women were
not relegated to inferior positions within the organizational hierarchy; only women
resided at Hull-House for the first 3 years of operation. But Hull-House was more
than just the site of emancipation for women residents. It was a place where women
were able to nurture the members of their community, much like the Great Societyera women studied by Naples (1992, 1998), whom she characterizes as “community
caretakers” and “activist mothers.”
In particular, we can see from the data presented above that the focus of HullHouse was on women and children, who were most in need and most neglected.
“Jane Addams and Ellen Starr, unlike the residents of Toynbee Hall, who attempted
to become friends of their neighborhood through its men, tried to reach their
neighbors through the children and their mothers” (McCree 1970, p. 109). Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg’s (1985, pp. 263–264) notion of “public mothers” is helpful in
making sense of why they sought to make this connection. Speaking of Addams and
other nineteenth-century women reformers, she argues that they “felt the same
devotion for their ‘children’ that biological mothers did. But whereas mothers
nurtured only their own, these women cared for hundreds, even thousands of
America’s neediest children.” Skocpol (1992, p. 353) agrees with this assessment,
adding that Addams and other women were able to be public mothers because there
was a sense in the reform community that “women had special proclivities for
decision making and civic activity; thus women were the logical ones to lead the
nation toward new social policies.”
We might consider practice at Hull-House to be maternalist. Following Koven
and Michel (1993, pp. 4–5), I am speaking of practices that “exalted women’s
capacity to mother” and encouraged “the values they attached to that role: care,
nurturance, and morality.” In a similar vein, Naples (1992) talks about “activist
mothering,” the nurturing of one’s community and contestation of the boundaries
between paid and unpaid labor; Addams and her compatriots understood that child
rearing and paid labor were not things to be balanced. Rather, there was a need in the
community for the integration of life and work, particularly for women. But this
dimension of the genesis of practice at Hull-House is not just a matter of whom
Addams and the residents of Hull-House were helping. It also concerns how they did
it. Again following Naples, (1998, p. 182), part of being an activist mother meant
that the women of Hull-House constantly contested “the analytic separation of
unpaid work from paid labor, personal interests from public issues, and nurturing
from social activism.” This was true both in terms of how the residents themselves
lived and how they helped others. As Muncy (1991, p. 17) points out, “for women
living in settlements, life without husbands or children allowed them not only
freedom to pursue careers but also the opportunity to live in communities where they
might form a particularly strong relationship with one woman while continuing
numerous other crucial friendships. No single relationship had to bear the burden of
all the partners’ needs because each lived amidst so many like-minded women […]
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Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
this foundation of personal support that women provided each other in the
settlements made their public lives possible.” Hull-House was “a home and yet it
was a work place” (Stebner 1997, p. 184).
By bypassing the existing, largely male-dominated social provision organizations in
Chicago (like the CRAS), residents were able to promote “a creative mixture of mutual
support and individual expression” (Sklar 1985, p. 676). And this creativity and
expression led to the kind of activist mothering and community care mentioned in the
previous paragraphs. Addams and the other residents did not follow the traditional
route of giving aid through the male head of the household. Rather, they frequently
provided aid directly to women in need, for example, in the form of childcare, laundry
facilities, training classes, or opportunities to socialize with other community women.
The direct challenge to “women’s economic and political dependency on men”
(Gordon 1995, p. 65) unfettered some neighborhood women, enabling them to do their
best possible work as mothers by removing men from the equation. The merging of
the spheres of life and work carried over into the way the residents perceived the needs
of women and children in the community. Helping was helping—no matter what the
area of need—from keeping clothes clean to finding someone to watch the children
during work or imparting adequate skills for certain paid jobs.
The maternalist approach at Hull-House intertwined with the pragmatist dimensions
of its residents’ practice. As Deegan (2002, pp. 16–17) points out in discussing what
she calls the “feminist pragmatism” at Hull-House, the instability resulting from
gender lines drawn in nineteenth-century society allowed women to use their
separation as a “fulcrum for redefining the larger social situation.” Addams and
other residents of Hull-House chafed against these gender lines, which were even
supported by some contemporary pragmatists, notably William James. Seigfried
(1996, p. 111), in her book Pragmatism and Feminism, shows that Addams rejected
James’s “espousal of the ideology of separate spheres because she explicitly attack[ed]
men’s injustices to women and argue[ed] that women should not let their
responsibilities in the home prevent their active participation in society.” The process
of redefinition through active participation was pragmatist, but it stemmed from a
maternalist attempt to restore what Deegan (2002) calls “the natural unity of the
world” (p. 17). In summary, the particular social possibility at Hull-House came to
pass (in part) because of the ability of (upper-) middle-class women residing there to
engage in a form of social jujutsu, yielding to male pressure to become “public
mothers” but then capitalizing on the opportunities that community mothering
provided, namely, the ability to pursue careers, participate in the public sphere, and
help their community while serving as a catalyst for the merger of the separate spheres
of life and work for women. In pragmatist fashion, they were able to redefine their
situation and engage in a process of transformative, Deweyan growth.
Creativity and experimentation are not teleological concepts (as Joas reminds us);
as social processes, they frequently lead to unanticipated results. Addams was,
following Lindblom (1959), “muddling through” her existence at Hull-House.42 It
began when Addams and Starr broke from their existing social reality and placed
42
While Lindblom is an economist and political scientist but not a pragmatist (although these things are
not necessarily mutually exclusive), his “science of ‘muddling through’” resonates with the main argument
that we should be skeptical of tidy, parsimonious means-ends explanations of social action.
Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
613
themselves in new situations that they could not address with existing habits
and vocabularies of motive. Rather than following strict rules of conduct, they
developed new habits for helping people. But they did so, not just through the
development of a method of investigation of social problems, but also by
embedding themselves in a set of social relations that enabled them to learn
from, respond to, and grow with their neighbors. In other words, Hull-House as
an institution was not simply a means Jane Addams deployed in pursuit of the
goal of helping others. It was an emerging social entity that was in a constant
state of change, one driven by the fact that its founder and residents were
continually revising and reconstructing ends-in-view in light of the perplexities
they faced as they tried to help people.
Conclusion
As indicated in the introduction, this article makes two substantive contributions to
the social sciences. The first contribution is theoretical: it shows the value of
pragmatism in doing empirical sociology (and historical sociology in particular).
Here we return to discussion in the opening paragraphs of Adams et al. (2005) and
their mention of historical sociology’s “third wave.” Taken as a whole, this wave’s
historical sociological work is grounded (explicitly or implicitly) in some variety of
a teleological interpretation of social action. Ends are given by interests or even by
culture, and social actors still (teleologically) realize those ends. The theoretical
frame of this work takes a different approach. Pragmatist theory allow us to see that
residents, in pragmatist fashion, felt their way through a process of experimentation
based on perplexity, gained intelligence, and brought that intelligence to bear on new
perplexities. It was an ongoing process with no end except meliorism and the growth
of the community. Pragmatist theory helps provide some coherence to the early days
of Hull-House. In times of perplexity, Addams and her followers rejected existing
conventions (or vocabularies of motive) in the field of social provision. They chose
to play the game by a different set of rules. Instead of being constrained by the
existing economistic vocabulary of how to help people in Chicago, the women of
Hull-House constructed new vocabularies through experimentation. They developed
new habits. Pragmatist theory serves as a valuable heuristic, turning a bunch of
catch-as-catch-can actions into a loose, improvisational program of social action.
Further, pragmatism helps us move beyond the means-ends frame in thinking about
what Addams and the other residents did at Hull-House. They did not always know
where they were going with their acts. Ends-in-view, like way stations on a journey
to an undetermined destination, often emerged out of relations between residents and
their neighbors. But a constant, straight line cutting through these ends-in-view (and
their accompanying means) was a spirit of helping purely for its own sake. In using
pragmatism, I hope to have invigorated and renewed an old way of looking at means
and ends within history. In other words, this article should provide some support to
those historical sociologists who might consider (or already are) taking a pragmatist
turn in their work. And, it should strengthen the empirical foundations of
pragmatism as an alternative (non-teleological) way to understand social action
and construct accounts of the social world.
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Theor Soc (2011) 40:589–617
Second, perhaps this work will contribute to the pragmatist revival going on in the
social sciences. Specifically, the practical dimensions of pragmatism are not a
significant component of the recent revival. Perhaps a deeper understanding of the
practical dimensions of pragmatism at Hull-House might encourage those calling for
a pragmatist revival to think, not just in terms of texts of theory and philosophy, but
also in terms of actual experience and action, the very stuff that the classical
pragmatists (Addams included) thought was essential to democracy and social
ethics. As Addams (2002 [1902], p. 9) points out:
It is as though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience,
because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to
the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the
crowd.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Mustafa Emirbayer, Chas Camic, Marie-Laure Djelic, Ivan
Ermakoff, Myra Marx Ferree, Phil Gorski, Pamela Herd, Joel Rogers, and the Editors and anonymous
reviewers from Theory and Society for advice and encouragement with this article.
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Erik Schneiderhan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is the author
of “Reasons and Inclusion: The Foundation of Deliberation” and “Dewey and Bourdieu on Democracy”
(with Mustafa Emirbayer). He is currently studying the pragmatist foundations of multiculturalist theory.