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The religious and missionary purpose of the Settlement has been expressed by the first Warden, Rev. S. A. Barnett (Practicable Socialism, p. 166): "It is an age of the Higher Life. Higher conceptions of virtue, a higher ideal of what is possible for man, are the best things given to our day, but they are received only by those who have the time and power to study. They who want the necessaries of life, want also a virtuous and equal mind,' says the Chinese sage; and so the poor, being without those things necessary to the growth of mind and feeling, jeopardise Salvation-the possession, that is, of a life at one with the Good, and the True, at one with God." The Settlement is one of the forms of the attempt to make human society furnish the necessary conditions of a holy life.

5. A PROVISIONAL DEFINITION OF THE SETTLEMENT. Our review of the history of the movement and the testimony as to the ruling motives of the workers, brings us to the place where we should attempt to state tentatively the characteristic marks of the Settlement.

"Homes in the poorer quarters of a city, where educated men and women may live in daily personal contact with the working people. Here they may identify themselves as citizens with all the public interests of their neighborhood, may coöperate with their neighbors in every effort for the common good, and share with them, in the spirit of friendship, the fruit and inspiration of their wider opportunities." (ADA S. WOOLFOLK, in Johnson's Cyclopedia.)

"All definitions agree in making residence in the

district or neighborhood where work is undertaken an essential condition." (National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1896, p. 167.)

Miss Dudley says: "A group of educated men or women (or both) living among manual workers, in a neighborly and social spirit. Organized work is not essential, but is a convenient method of getting acquainted with people. Nothing is essential except residence and a spirit of brotherhood, expressed actively."

Dr. Stanton Coit, the first Head-Worker in America, expresses the central idea of the work in these words: "Unlike the many utopian dreams of the earlier communism, the scheme I have been proposing does not seek to isolate a group of families from contact with their surrounding society, or to disregard the present conditions and motives of life. On the contrary, it plants itself in the midst of the modern city, believing that in it there is already room to lay at least the foundations of the New and Perfect City."

The Settlement is not an industrial enterprise, and it does not compete with employers or with trade unions. It is not a school, nor a mercantile establishment, nor a relief agency, nor a Church. It is nearly allied to a Household or a Colony of Households. The members of this community subject themselves to the conditions of their neighborhood; they smell vile odors and look upon disgusting spectacles; they buy food of the same merchants who serve their neighbors; they listen to the jargon of the multitude; they enter into the aspirations of

the leaders and join them in plans of betterment; they aid families, societies, schools, churches to realize personality and to multiply the means of virtue and rational happiness. They have realized the significance of Charles Kingsley's words: "This bond of neighborhood is, after all, one of the most human-yea, of the most Divine-of all bonds. Every man you meet is your brother, and must be, for good or evil; you cannot live without him; you must help or you must injure each other."

If we judge the Settlement, as we ought to do, by its best and wisest representatives, it cannot be charged with being something artificial. It does not come under the condemnation and it does deserve the praise contained in the wise words of W. E. Channing, uttered long ago:

"We should beware of confounding together, as of equal importance, those associations which are formed by our Creator, which spring from our very constitution, and are inseparable from our being, and those of which we are now treating, which man invents for particular times and exigencies. Let us never place our weak, short-sighted contrivances on a level with the arrangements of God. We have acknowledged the infinite importance of society to the development of human powers and affections. But when we thus speak of society, we mean chiefly the relations in which God has placed us; we mean the connections of family, of neighborhood, of country, and the great bond of humanity, uniting us with our whole kind. The value of associations is to be measured by the energy, the free

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dom, the activity, the moral power, which they encourage and diffuse. In truth, the great object of all benevolence is to give power, activity, and freedom to others. We cannot, in the strict sense of the word make any being happy. We can give others the means of happiness, together with the motives to the faithful use of them; but on this faithfulness, on the free and full exercise of their own powers, their happiness depends. There is thus a fixed, impassable limit to human benevolence. It can only make men happy through themselves, through their freedom and energy. On this principle, associations for restoring to men health, strength, the use of their limbs, the use of their senses, especially of sight and hearing, are highly to be approved, for such enlarge men's powers; whilst charitable associations, which weaken in men the motives to exertion, which offer a bounty to idleness, or make beggary as profitable as labor, are great calamities to society, and peculiarly calamitous to those whom they relieve. On the same principle, associations which are designed to awaken the human mind, to give to men of all classes a consciousness of their intellectual powers, to communicate knowledge of a useful and quickening character, to encourage men in thinking with freedom and vigor, to inspire an ardent love and pursuit of truth,—are most worthy of patronage."

6. MISSION OF THE SETTLEMENT TO THE "EDUCATED CLASSES.-It is almost impossible to disabuse the mind of the prejudice that the Settlement is a movement merely to help the poor. This pre

judice is itself a symptom of a deep and serious disease in people of comfortable society, and an indication of their false and narrow mental furniture. The Settlement seeks to correct the cynical and unjust notions about the "lower classes" which too commonly prevail and which do great harm.

There is hardly an economic or political heresy or absurdity popular among the wage earners which does not find able and conscientious advocates among college bred people. Over against the violence of striking trade unions there is the petty oppression, the constant bullying which provoke strikes and fan the flame of passion into fury. If the aldermen of the poor are venal, what shall we say of the treason and iniquity of the rich men who bribe and buy them? Is there anything more pitiless than fashion?

The Settlement asks young married people, instead of renting a costly "dove cote" (whose rent they cannot always afford to pay), to spend at least one or two years where they can share the life, the cares, the contests of those whose toils make wealth, culture and progress possible. Even two years thus spent will help people to return, if they must, to their former circle, wider, wiser, saner, more just.

It is not well to be cruel and not know that we are cruel. It will not bring us joy in the end to discover that we have for years been standing on human hearts and giving needless pain because we lacked knowledge of our neighbors. Social leaders are never fitted for their political and educational tasks until they know by contact, real and intimate, "how the other half lives,"

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